FIC: Life under the Observer Effect 5/5 (Pam/Ryan, Jim/Pam)
Title: Life under the Observer Effect, Part 5 of 5
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Pam/Ryan, Jim/Pam
Length: 4700 words in this chapter (out of a total 18,500)
Summary: In science, the term "observer effect" refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed.
AN: THE END. Though apparently I'm writing an epilogue now, so we'll see when that gets done. This does officially finish the official fic, though, so roll credits. For miss_bennie, on her birthday. Thanks to kyrafic and agate for betaing. Previous parts: one, two, three, four. Or use the tag.
**
Ryan lets himself into his parents' house just before midnight, the ground floor already dark. He feels his way up to his old room, through the deep darkness in the stairwell, his hand running instinctively around the picture frames. He's come in late like this so many times over the years, past his curfew, or when he was in college and didn't have a curfew. When he'd been married to Pam, they'd stayed in the guest room downstairs, where there was a double bed, but now he's back in the room he grew up in, bunk beds with baseball players on the sheets. He flips the light switch, a warm yellow glow, and sees that his parents' dog, Fletch, is waiting for him on the foot of the lower bunk, wagging his tail hopefully as Ryan comes in. Ryan scratches him behind the ears.
He changes into old flannel pajama pants, not bothering with a shirt, and putters around his old room, looking at the books he didn't bother to take with him when he moved away. His parents don't come in here much - there's a thin layer of dust on the stereo.
As Ryan's about to get into bed, Fletch's ears perk up, and he looks toward the door, which is weird - usually Fletch is too tired at this time of night to do much beyond wag his tail. When Ryan looks out the window, he sees headlights in the driveway. What... ?
As he's heading back down the stairs to see what's going on, he can hear somebody yelling outside, coming up the walk. "Ryan Howard the temp!" he hears. "Ryan Howard!" Oh God, it's Jim Halpert.
Ryan wrenches the door open and interrupts Jim in the middle of another yell. "Shh!" he says. "My parents are asleep upstairs."
Jim's pretty hammered. Ryan hopes he didn't drive here, but when he looks over, luckily Jim's old roommate's hanging out the window of the car. "Sorry, dude," he says. Ryan tries to remember his name. Matt? Mike? "I didn't know where we were going until we got here and he started yelling."
"'S okay," Ryan says. He takes Jim by the arm and shuts the front door behind him. "Let's talk outside, buddy," he says, leading him back toward the car. Jim stops just a few feet away from the front door though, swaying slightly on his feet. Ryan crosses his arms across his bare chest and says, "So what's up, bro?"
"You," Jim says. "Need to leave Pam alone."
"Do I?" Ryan says. Matt - no, Mark! Ryan remembers. Mark hasn't bothered to get out of the car. There's another guy in there with him, but Ryan can't see who it is.
It's a pretty funny situation, really. Jim swaying in Ryan's parents' front yard, Ryan in his pajamas, a couple of frat guys watching them from the car.
"Yes," Jim says, very definitely. He goes to poke Ryan in the chest, but misses.
Ryan catches Jim's hand before he can try to poke Ryan again. "Don't worry," he says. "You're marrying her Saturday, aren't you? Not me."
"That's right," Jim says. "Me, not you." He wrenches his arm free and pokes Ryan just above the nipple.
"Dude," Ryan says.
"Listen to me," Jim says.
Ryan rubs his forehead, trying not to smile. "I'm listening," he says. He sits down on the front steps. Jim towers over him this way, but it's better than Jim towering over him while he's standing up. Tall bastard.
"Are you still in love with her?" Jim says.
Ryan looks up at him. He wonders, statistically, how many bachelor parties end with the groom accosting his fiancee's ex-husband. He should get Hunter to look it up. "What does it matter?" Ryan says.
"Oh," Jim says. "It matters."
"Not really," Ryan says.
Jim starts to try to sit down, but loses his balance halfway through and goes sprawling. He manages to get into a sitting position somehow, propping himself up oddly with his arms. "I don't like this ground," he says.
"Came out of nowhere," Ryan murmurs.
"Out of nowhere," Jim repeats.
Ryan scratches his shoulder. "I think you better go sleep it off," he says.
Jim shakes his head and keeps shaking it. "I came here to say something to you."
Ryan laces his fingers together and puts them behind his head, his elbows in vees. Suddenly he wonders where Randall is with the camera. "Did you ditch the documentary?" Ryan asks.
Jim's still shaking his head from the last thing Ryan said, but Ryan thinks it goes for this too. "They're in the car," Jim says.
Oh. So that's the other dude sitting with Mark. Well. It'll be quite a special episode.
"Ryan," Jim says. "I have something to say."
"Hit me," Ryan says, and yawns. It's late, he's too old for this. The night air feels weird and cool on his bare chest, but the front steps he's sitting on are still warm from the day's sun, heat soaking through his pajama pants.
"Pam," Jim says, "is wonderful, and perfect, and deserves happiness, and you treated her very badly and I resent it."
"Oh, is that all?" Ryan says. He was expecting something a little more dramatic. On thinking about it, though, he doesn't know what that would've been. "Tell me something I don't know."
"I resent it," Jim repeats. He crawls toward Ryan and pokes him in the nipple again.
"Jesus," Ryan says. "Leave my nipples alone."
"No, I will not," Jim says. "You leave Pam's nipples alone."
"Hokay!" Ryan says. He's pretty much equally torn between the urges either to laugh or to punch Jim in the face, and is desperately trying to do neither. He's just glad they don't have a pool for anyone to get pushed into. "I think we're done here." He levers himself up and stands there, looking down at drunk Jim.
"Pam is perfect," Jim says.
Ryan reaches out a hand to help him up. "Come on, there, tiger," he says. Jim looks at Ryan's hand like he isn't quite sure what to do with it. Ryan grabs his forearm and starts pulling him up anyway. "Anyway, Pam isn't perfect," Ryan says as Jim staggers to his feet. "She's a person."
"She is not a person," Jim says. "She is my dream girl."
"Okay," Ryan says, trying to make his voice soothing. He glances over at the car, trying to signal Mark to come help him. Mark doesn't move. Ryan starts to haul Jim towards the car.
"You know what's better than a dream girl?" Ryan says, guiding Jim along the front path.
"What?" Jim says.
"An actual human being."
Jim just looks confused. "You're a weirdo, Ryan Howard," he says.
Mark finally gets out of the car when Ryan and Jim are a few yards away, and between the two of them, they get Jim tucked away in the backseat okay.
"Sorry," Mark says again, looking at Ryan's bare feet on the asphalt of the driveway.
"Eh, I probably deserved it," Ryan says. He rubs one foot against the opposite leg to get off a pebble sticking to it. The bottom of his foot is black with dirt and tar.
Mark shrugs, and opens the driver's side door. "I don't know, man," he says. "This wedding...." He trails off.
"What?" Ryan says.
"Well, I never expected it," Mark says. "But Jim never got her out of his system, so. I don't know."
"Maybe that's love," Ryan says. "Never getting someone out of your system."
Mark snorts. "Maybe," he says. He says that 'Maybe' like it means 'Maybe if monkeys fly out my butt.' "Anyway," Mark says, "I'm best man, and officially supportive, so I'm sure it's cool. And if anybody asks...."
"Tonight never happened," Ryan says. He looks directly at the documentary camera, its one eye staring at them through the windshield. "And no one will ever know," he intones soberly, straight into it.
Mark follows his look and snorts again. "Yeah," he says, and gets in the car. Jim seems to already be passed out in the back seat. Mark puts the car in reverse. "Later, man," he says out the open car window.
"Later," Ryan says, and starts to gingerly walk back to the house, trying to avoid the pebbles along the walkway. It's a relief when he's finally on the carpet of the front hallway, not just because his feet feel better but also because he's not out making a spectacle of himself in front of God and the neighbors and the camera.
His parents don't seem to have woken up, and Fletch is sound asleep at the bottom of his bunk bed, so all is well. He washes his feet off in the bathroom, splashes some water on his face, and goes to lie down on baseball player sheets, contorted around the dog.
**
The next morning, Ryan throws on jeans and a blue t-shirt - Pam's favorite shirt of his - and goes over to the hotel to spend a couple hours with Hunter, working on the stuff he'd had Hunter put together the night before.
As they're finishing up, Hunter says, "How's the project coming?"
Ryan looks at the Utica numbers and isn't quite sure what Hunter's talking about. "Project?"
"Getting Pam back," Hunter says.
Oh, that. Ryan spins his pen on the back of his hand. "About as well as can be expected," he says.
"That bad, huh?"
Ryan hates when Hunter tries to be sympathetic. It always seems to come out sort of mean.
"Yeah, well, I'll probably stick around through the wedding anyway," Ryan says. "You can go back to New York, though. I'll put you on the Martz bus."
Hunter shrugs. "Sure, whatever." Ryan drops him off at the station right after lunch - he'll feel better with Hunter gone, he's decided. At least that way Hunter can't give any more interviews to the documentary, and besides, Ryan can't keep paying for a hotel room for him just so Ryan'll have somebody to sit with at Applebee's when he crashes bachelor parties. He's glad Hunter stopped asking if things were in his job description two years ago.
That afternoon, Ryan goes to the wedding rehearsal, obviously. If he's going to annoy Pam to death, he's not going to be half-hearted about it, and when Pam sees him there, she looks irritated but not surprised. Jim's next to her, looking kind of pale and hungover, his hair limp against his forehead. Greg pulls Ryan aside for an interview before he can talk to either of them, which is maybe for the best. Not that Ryan has anything else to say to them anyway - at this point, he's mostly showing up to things out of a last sad gasp of hope and the feeling that he's made some kind of internal commitment to seeing this thing through, no matter how hopeless it is. He wonders if Pam's going to change her name to Halpert.
Greg asks him about how he feels about Pam, the wedding, his job, etc, etc. Ryan gives brief, noncommittal answers - the documentary has enough of his retardation on film without him voluntarily adding to it.
After he finishes the interview, he slides into one of the seats about halfway from the front, slouching down to watch the rehearsal. There are a lot of people milling around, waiting to get started - Pam's off to his left, talking on her cell phone. He hears something about salmon, and is glad that at least he's not the one having to deal with last minute catering disasters.
Jim's up front, talking to Mark and pinching the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. But then he looks up and sees Ryan sitting alone, seems to make up his mind about something, and heads in Ryan's direction. Oh, great.
But Pam hangs up the phone and comes and intercepts Jim before he can reach Ryan, touching his arm a few feet away. "That was the caterer," she says to Jim. "I guess instead of salmon we're having swordfish."
"Oh," Jim says. "Well, that's okay, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Pam says. She seems stressed out. "Hey, you picked up the centerpieces for the reception this afternoon, right?"
"Oh," Jim says, in a voice like something horrifying has just dawned on him. "Um. Whoops."
"Jim!" Pam says. "How could you forget? I called and reminded you this morning!"
Ryan remembers this argument, how the script is supposed to go. Now Jim should come back with a promise to get them tomorrow morning instead, and an excuse maybe about being hungover, and maybe say something about how she shouldn't flip out so much. Then they can yell for a little bit and both blow off some steam, and everybody will feel better afterwards. Pam and Ryan had this kind of stressed out argument like 30 times when they were married, and it's no big deal.
So Ryan's really surprised when Jim just kind of stands there silently, his lips tightening, and that instead of saying something rude back, he turns on his heel and walks away.
Well, that's... something. Pam stands there looking sort of bereft, like she's not quite sure what happened and has no idea what to do now. Wow. Ryan wonders if their really terrible conflict-resolution skills came up in pre-marital counseling.
Pam glances over at Ryan and glares. "Oh, don't sit there smirking," she says. She's clearly some combination of angry and embarrassed and upset, and he doesn't really blame her. Between the stress and the non-fight and Ryan witnessing the whole thing, he can see why she's actually on the verge of angry tears.
"Sorry," Ryan says, getting up. He digs a Kleenex out of his pocket and hands it to her. "It's okay, Pamela," he says in an undertone. "Don't cry."
"God, shut up," she says, taking the Kleenex from him and wiping at her eyes. Her voice is shaky, and he tentatively rubs her back a little bit. She doesn't pull away, but she doesn't make eye contact either, just keeps taking deep breaths and trying to pull herself together.
It only takes a few seconds for her to calm down. "Okay," she says. "I have to go find Jim."
"Okay," Ryan says, and watches her walk off towards the house, still carrying the Kleenex wadded up in her hand.
The camera is pointed right at him, and he glances sidelong at it. Yeah, quite a reunion special.
The rehearsal finally starts about fifteen minutes later, after Pam and Jim have come back out of the house looking like they're okay again. He doesn't know if that means they talked about it, or that they didn't. Either way, Ryan watches the wedding party walk down the aisle, doofy slow steps, looking even more ridiculous in their casual clothes. Lori waves at him a little bit as she passes him. He smiles at her.
He turns around to watch Pam walk in, and is surprised to see Michael Scott grab the arm her dad isn't holding and start walking down the aisle with both of them. Pam's eyes widen and she jerks her elbow away, but Michael doesn't give up that easily. Ryan has no idea where Michael came from, but then he sees Gene from the documentary walk around the side of the house looking sort of smug and amused, and oh. That would add some drama to the proceedings. Unscrupulous bastards. Ryan briefly feels guilty for starting the whole camera thing up again.
"Michael," Pam hisses. "Let go." Ryan sees her look meaningfully at Jim, like, do something, but Jim's just standing at the front like he has no clue what course of action to take.
"Okay, okay," Michael says. He lets go of Pam, but he doesn't sit down or go away. Instead he raises both his hands and says, "I'd like to make a toast."
Ryan looks back to Jim, but everybody up front, especially the minister, looks too surprised to do anything. And Jim, maybe predictably, is just making a face at the camera. So that's still going on.
Ryan rolls his eyes. "Hey, Michael," he says, standing up. "Why don't you come over here and sit with me?"
"What?" Michael says. "No, I'm making a toast."
"It's, uh, not really toast time," Ryan says. He walks over to take Michael by the arm. "Here, come watch with me."
He physically sits Michael down and takes his seat next to him. "Okay?" Ryan says. He kind of waves to the minister, like, carry on.
"Ryan," Michael whispers. "I'm just - I'm really touched you want me to sit with you."
Ryan nods at him as noncommittally as he can. When he glances back at Pam, she's giving him the most grateful look he's ever seen. He smiles and shrugs at her.
The rest of the rehearsal goes off with hardly a hitch - Ryan has to keep a hand on the back of Michael's neck to keep him sitting down, which is not really the direction he was hoping his relationship with Michael would go, and at one point, he has to put his hand over Michael's mouth. But it's worth it, to do for Pam. Or he thinks so until Michael starts licking his palm.
"Oh my God," Ryan says, and jerks his hand away. Ew. He rubs his hand on his jeans and thinks about all the ways he's going to kill Gene.
After the rehearsal wraps up, everybody's headed to get changed for the rehearsal dinner, and he doesn't even really get a chance to talk to Pam. She mouths "thank you" at him from across the yard, though, so that's something. But then she holds hands with Jim and goes into the house with him, so that's something else.
He thinks about going to the rehearsal dinner, too, but what's he going to do there? Look like a pathetic idiot some more? Instead he calls his parents and ask if they still want to go out to dinner together, and suspects he might be getting depressed. Rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, it's all so horribly real, like it's actually happening.
His parents very tactfully don't ask anything about Pam or the wedding, which he appreciates. They talk about his job, and his brother's new baby, and the latest season of American Idol. It's calming, like life goes on or whatever. Even if he stays divorced and loses Pam forever, he can always come back here and talk about American Idol with two people who love him.
Oh God, he's getting depressed again.
After they get home from the restaurant, Ryan doesn't quite know what to do. He watches a Seinfeld rerun with his dad, feeling antsy and at loose ends. When the credits run, he gets up.
"I think I'm going to go for a drive," Ryan says. His dad looks sympathetic and nods, and on his way out the door Ryan kisses his mom on the cheek.
He doesn't know where he's going, exactly. Wandering the streets of Scranton, Pennsylvania - he's been doing that a lot lately, it feels like. He rolls down the windows and makes turns without thinking about them too much, and finally ends up at St. Anthony Elementary School, pulling up across the street from the playground.
The place where Pam first kissed him. Well, he's going to finish up the weekend in style, anyway, brooding here.
He gets out of the car and runs his hands through his hair, probably messing it up beyond repair. Oh well, who cares, no one's going to see him. The swings and jungle gym are all still there, just like he remembers them, empty and dark. There's something about a playground at night that makes him feel like he should be smoking under streetlights. But he doesn't smoke, so. Instead he goes over to the third swing and sits down, moving himself back and forth gently with his feet on the sand.
The night's clear and warm, and he can see a lot of stars from where he sits, all bright and unmistakable. You can hardly see any stars at all in New York, there's so much light, so it's kind of strange and surprising they're all still up there, shining away. Like the world hasn't changed as much as it feels like it has since he moved to New York. The moon's round and full, and it's quiet, way quieter than it ever is in the city. He hears an owl hooting, somewhere over in the trees.
A car passes, headlights flickering over him as they turn onto the street that runs past the playground, and Ryan swings gently back and forth, thinking. The wedding's tomorrow - does he crash it? He doesn't think they ask if anyone has any reason these two shouldn't be joined together anymore, and even if they did, he doesn't think "The groom is a douchebag" is the kind of reason the minister would find valid.
Oh well. He knew coming down here that it was a suicide mission. At least he tried. He put up a good fight.
He makes a divot in the sand with his foot, then smoothes it back over again. Maybe he'll just go back to New York in the morning, skip the wedding altogether.
Another car comes around the corner, engine rumbling, but instead of continuing down the street, it slows and parks right behind Ryan's car. Ryan holds onto the chains of the swing, still swinging slightly, and watches as Pam gets out of the driver's seat. She's alone, still dressed for the rehearsal dinner, a green dress, a pretty one he's never seen before. He knows if Pam's here, the camera's probably not far away, but figures they parked around the corner and are sneaking up to try to give him and Pam the illusion of privacy. Well, what else is new. Learn a fresh trick, Greg.
He watches her walk towards him, her head down, holding a clutch in her right hand.
"Hi," he says, when she gets close enough to hear him.
She stops in front of him, and finally makes eye contact. "You weren't at your parents' house," she says.
"How did they know I'd be here?" Ryan asks. He's genuinely a little confused, since when he left he hadn't even known he'd be there.
"They didn't," Pam says. She sets her clutch down on the sand and sits on the swing next to him. "I guessed."
Ryan twists himself with his foot so he's half facing her, then lets himself untwist again. "Good guess," he says. "First one?"
"Well, I know how sentimental you are," she says.
Ryan's sort of offended. "I am not," he says.
Pam raises her eyebrows at him, then pointedly looks around at where they are. "Oh really," she says. Very dry, Pamela Beesly, very dry.
"Shut up," Ryan says.
"This is right about where it happened, right?" Pam says. "This swing?"
Ryan decides to play dumb. "Where what happened?" he says.
"I like how you're pretending you're not pathetically in love with me now," Pam says. "That horse has left the barn, Ryan Howard."
Ryan tries not to smile. "Yeah," he says. "This is where you kissed me for the first time. We were standing up, though. You'd been on the swings, and you jumped off and landed right in front of me. You were laughing."
"Oh yeah?" Pam says. She stands up again and walks to position herself right about where she'd been that day. "Like, right about here?"
Ryan looks at her. "Yeah," he says. "You were there." He gets up and moves to where he had been standing, putting his hands on her arms to move her slightly to exactly where she'd been. "And I was here," he says.
So now they're standing really close, his hands still on her arms, right in each other's personal space. He can feel his whole body sort of lighting up, thrumming all over, like he's ten times more alive than he is normally, aware of all his fingers, of the span of his chest. Aware of Pam's body, too, the curve of her waist, the goosebumps on her upper arms, the ridge of her collarbone.
"And that's when I kissed you," Pam says, really quietly.
"Uh huh," Ryan says. He looks at her mouth, the line of it, the dip of her upper lip. The streetlights illuminate her face just enough so he can see her, though her eyes are still in shadow.
"Um, I called off the wedding," Pam says. "I told Jim I couldn't do it."
Ryan feels a thousand things at once, so much he's a little light-headed, happiness so intense it almost hurts, like his body's going to fly apart with it. "Did you?" Ryan says. He can't even think what's he's saying, with his whole body expanding like this. She called off the wedding. She called off the wedding. She's standing here so close she could kiss him, and she's not marrying Jim Halpert at all.
"Yeah," Pam says.
"Well, that's - that's good," Ryan starts, but Pam kisses him before he can say anything else. It's so easy and familiar, kissing her, like falling off a log into the best water he's ever felt. He puts his palm against her face, feels her cheek getting hot as she blushes under his hand, and she makes the little noise that's his favorite from her, a happy, involuntary noise.
When they finally pull apart, Ryan grins at her, too happy to stop himself. "So that's two out of three weddings you've called off a day or two before," he says.
Pam hits him on the arm, gently. "Asshole."
"I'm the only one you can actually stand to marry, huh?" he says.
Pam shakes her head at him, but she's smiling. "Looks that way," she says.
"What made you decide not to go through with it?" Ryan asks.
Pam shrugs and kisses him again. And once he's kissing her, he doesn't want to stop, so it's a minute or two before she can answer him.
When she pulls away she puts her hands against his chest, smoothing the fabric of his t-shirt. "I like this shirt," she says. "It brings out your eyes."
"I know," Ryan says. "Why didn't you end up marrying him?" He really wants to know, is the thing.
Pam's hands are still smoothing over his chest, and she's looking at the t-shirt logo, which says "Martha's Vineyard." They got it two summers ago, when they went out there for the day while Ryan was at a conference in Boston.
Pam bites her lower lip, then finally says, "I guess I thought we could pick up right where we left off, back before he moved away." She looks a little sad. "But we've changed and four months isn't really enough... I don't know. It wasn't the way I thought it would be. And I don't think I'm really the person he thought I.... Well. I don't know."
"Ah," Ryan says. He puts his hands on her waist and pulls her in closer again, kisses her lightly. Her lips are soft, familiar. "And because you're crazy about me, right?" he says as he pulls back.
Pam smiles and rolls her eyes. "Because I'm crazy, yes," she says.
"Ha, ha," Ryan says, and kisses her. When he pulls back this time, he says, very softly, "Marry me again?"
"You sure you want me?" Pam says. "Because I don't know, your feelings seem pretty ambiguous."
Ryan laughs. "Shut up."
Pam smiles at him, smiles and smiles. "I was hoping you'd ask me that," she says, quiet.
"Yeah?" Ryan says. He thinks about the first time he proposed, on 36th Street in the cold, and brushes a wisp of Pam's hair out of her face. "So?" he says.
"Yeah," Pam says. "Yeah, I think I'll risk it."
When Ryan finally finishes kissing her again, he catches a glimpse of the camera over her shoulder, Randall hiding behind a tree.
Ryan looks right at the lens, as deadpan as he can. "Sorry, guys," he says. "She's with me."
**
END
To the very belated epilogue
Fandom: The Office (US)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Pam/Ryan, Jim/Pam
Length: 4700 words in this chapter (out of a total 18,500)
Summary: In science, the term "observer effect" refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed.
AN: THE END. Though apparently I'm writing an epilogue now, so we'll see when that gets done. This does officially finish the official fic, though, so roll credits. For miss_bennie, on her birthday. Thanks to kyrafic and agate for betaing. Previous parts: one, two, three, four. Or use the tag.
**
Ryan lets himself into his parents' house just before midnight, the ground floor already dark. He feels his way up to his old room, through the deep darkness in the stairwell, his hand running instinctively around the picture frames. He's come in late like this so many times over the years, past his curfew, or when he was in college and didn't have a curfew. When he'd been married to Pam, they'd stayed in the guest room downstairs, where there was a double bed, but now he's back in the room he grew up in, bunk beds with baseball players on the sheets. He flips the light switch, a warm yellow glow, and sees that his parents' dog, Fletch, is waiting for him on the foot of the lower bunk, wagging his tail hopefully as Ryan comes in. Ryan scratches him behind the ears.
He changes into old flannel pajama pants, not bothering with a shirt, and putters around his old room, looking at the books he didn't bother to take with him when he moved away. His parents don't come in here much - there's a thin layer of dust on the stereo.
As Ryan's about to get into bed, Fletch's ears perk up, and he looks toward the door, which is weird - usually Fletch is too tired at this time of night to do much beyond wag his tail. When Ryan looks out the window, he sees headlights in the driveway. What... ?
As he's heading back down the stairs to see what's going on, he can hear somebody yelling outside, coming up the walk. "Ryan Howard the temp!" he hears. "Ryan Howard!" Oh God, it's Jim Halpert.
Ryan wrenches the door open and interrupts Jim in the middle of another yell. "Shh!" he says. "My parents are asleep upstairs."
Jim's pretty hammered. Ryan hopes he didn't drive here, but when he looks over, luckily Jim's old roommate's hanging out the window of the car. "Sorry, dude," he says. Ryan tries to remember his name. Matt? Mike? "I didn't know where we were going until we got here and he started yelling."
"'S okay," Ryan says. He takes Jim by the arm and shuts the front door behind him. "Let's talk outside, buddy," he says, leading him back toward the car. Jim stops just a few feet away from the front door though, swaying slightly on his feet. Ryan crosses his arms across his bare chest and says, "So what's up, bro?"
"You," Jim says. "Need to leave Pam alone."
"Do I?" Ryan says. Matt - no, Mark! Ryan remembers. Mark hasn't bothered to get out of the car. There's another guy in there with him, but Ryan can't see who it is.
It's a pretty funny situation, really. Jim swaying in Ryan's parents' front yard, Ryan in his pajamas, a couple of frat guys watching them from the car.
"Yes," Jim says, very definitely. He goes to poke Ryan in the chest, but misses.
Ryan catches Jim's hand before he can try to poke Ryan again. "Don't worry," he says. "You're marrying her Saturday, aren't you? Not me."
"That's right," Jim says. "Me, not you." He wrenches his arm free and pokes Ryan just above the nipple.
"Dude," Ryan says.
"Listen to me," Jim says.
Ryan rubs his forehead, trying not to smile. "I'm listening," he says. He sits down on the front steps. Jim towers over him this way, but it's better than Jim towering over him while he's standing up. Tall bastard.
"Are you still in love with her?" Jim says.
Ryan looks up at him. He wonders, statistically, how many bachelor parties end with the groom accosting his fiancee's ex-husband. He should get Hunter to look it up. "What does it matter?" Ryan says.
"Oh," Jim says. "It matters."
"Not really," Ryan says.
Jim starts to try to sit down, but loses his balance halfway through and goes sprawling. He manages to get into a sitting position somehow, propping himself up oddly with his arms. "I don't like this ground," he says.
"Came out of nowhere," Ryan murmurs.
"Out of nowhere," Jim repeats.
Ryan scratches his shoulder. "I think you better go sleep it off," he says.
Jim shakes his head and keeps shaking it. "I came here to say something to you."
Ryan laces his fingers together and puts them behind his head, his elbows in vees. Suddenly he wonders where Randall is with the camera. "Did you ditch the documentary?" Ryan asks.
Jim's still shaking his head from the last thing Ryan said, but Ryan thinks it goes for this too. "They're in the car," Jim says.
Oh. So that's the other dude sitting with Mark. Well. It'll be quite a special episode.
"Ryan," Jim says. "I have something to say."
"Hit me," Ryan says, and yawns. It's late, he's too old for this. The night air feels weird and cool on his bare chest, but the front steps he's sitting on are still warm from the day's sun, heat soaking through his pajama pants.
"Pam," Jim says, "is wonderful, and perfect, and deserves happiness, and you treated her very badly and I resent it."
"Oh, is that all?" Ryan says. He was expecting something a little more dramatic. On thinking about it, though, he doesn't know what that would've been. "Tell me something I don't know."
"I resent it," Jim repeats. He crawls toward Ryan and pokes him in the nipple again.
"Jesus," Ryan says. "Leave my nipples alone."
"No, I will not," Jim says. "You leave Pam's nipples alone."
"Hokay!" Ryan says. He's pretty much equally torn between the urges either to laugh or to punch Jim in the face, and is desperately trying to do neither. He's just glad they don't have a pool for anyone to get pushed into. "I think we're done here." He levers himself up and stands there, looking down at drunk Jim.
"Pam is perfect," Jim says.
Ryan reaches out a hand to help him up. "Come on, there, tiger," he says. Jim looks at Ryan's hand like he isn't quite sure what to do with it. Ryan grabs his forearm and starts pulling him up anyway. "Anyway, Pam isn't perfect," Ryan says as Jim staggers to his feet. "She's a person."
"She is not a person," Jim says. "She is my dream girl."
"Okay," Ryan says, trying to make his voice soothing. He glances over at the car, trying to signal Mark to come help him. Mark doesn't move. Ryan starts to haul Jim towards the car.
"You know what's better than a dream girl?" Ryan says, guiding Jim along the front path.
"What?" Jim says.
"An actual human being."
Jim just looks confused. "You're a weirdo, Ryan Howard," he says.
Mark finally gets out of the car when Ryan and Jim are a few yards away, and between the two of them, they get Jim tucked away in the backseat okay.
"Sorry," Mark says again, looking at Ryan's bare feet on the asphalt of the driveway.
"Eh, I probably deserved it," Ryan says. He rubs one foot against the opposite leg to get off a pebble sticking to it. The bottom of his foot is black with dirt and tar.
Mark shrugs, and opens the driver's side door. "I don't know, man," he says. "This wedding...." He trails off.
"What?" Ryan says.
"Well, I never expected it," Mark says. "But Jim never got her out of his system, so. I don't know."
"Maybe that's love," Ryan says. "Never getting someone out of your system."
Mark snorts. "Maybe," he says. He says that 'Maybe' like it means 'Maybe if monkeys fly out my butt.' "Anyway," Mark says, "I'm best man, and officially supportive, so I'm sure it's cool. And if anybody asks...."
"Tonight never happened," Ryan says. He looks directly at the documentary camera, its one eye staring at them through the windshield. "And no one will ever know," he intones soberly, straight into it.
Mark follows his look and snorts again. "Yeah," he says, and gets in the car. Jim seems to already be passed out in the back seat. Mark puts the car in reverse. "Later, man," he says out the open car window.
"Later," Ryan says, and starts to gingerly walk back to the house, trying to avoid the pebbles along the walkway. It's a relief when he's finally on the carpet of the front hallway, not just because his feet feel better but also because he's not out making a spectacle of himself in front of God and the neighbors and the camera.
His parents don't seem to have woken up, and Fletch is sound asleep at the bottom of his bunk bed, so all is well. He washes his feet off in the bathroom, splashes some water on his face, and goes to lie down on baseball player sheets, contorted around the dog.
**
The next morning, Ryan throws on jeans and a blue t-shirt - Pam's favorite shirt of his - and goes over to the hotel to spend a couple hours with Hunter, working on the stuff he'd had Hunter put together the night before.
As they're finishing up, Hunter says, "How's the project coming?"
Ryan looks at the Utica numbers and isn't quite sure what Hunter's talking about. "Project?"
"Getting Pam back," Hunter says.
Oh, that. Ryan spins his pen on the back of his hand. "About as well as can be expected," he says.
"That bad, huh?"
Ryan hates when Hunter tries to be sympathetic. It always seems to come out sort of mean.
"Yeah, well, I'll probably stick around through the wedding anyway," Ryan says. "You can go back to New York, though. I'll put you on the Martz bus."
Hunter shrugs. "Sure, whatever." Ryan drops him off at the station right after lunch - he'll feel better with Hunter gone, he's decided. At least that way Hunter can't give any more interviews to the documentary, and besides, Ryan can't keep paying for a hotel room for him just so Ryan'll have somebody to sit with at Applebee's when he crashes bachelor parties. He's glad Hunter stopped asking if things were in his job description two years ago.
That afternoon, Ryan goes to the wedding rehearsal, obviously. If he's going to annoy Pam to death, he's not going to be half-hearted about it, and when Pam sees him there, she looks irritated but not surprised. Jim's next to her, looking kind of pale and hungover, his hair limp against his forehead. Greg pulls Ryan aside for an interview before he can talk to either of them, which is maybe for the best. Not that Ryan has anything else to say to them anyway - at this point, he's mostly showing up to things out of a last sad gasp of hope and the feeling that he's made some kind of internal commitment to seeing this thing through, no matter how hopeless it is. He wonders if Pam's going to change her name to Halpert.
Greg asks him about how he feels about Pam, the wedding, his job, etc, etc. Ryan gives brief, noncommittal answers - the documentary has enough of his retardation on film without him voluntarily adding to it.
After he finishes the interview, he slides into one of the seats about halfway from the front, slouching down to watch the rehearsal. There are a lot of people milling around, waiting to get started - Pam's off to his left, talking on her cell phone. He hears something about salmon, and is glad that at least he's not the one having to deal with last minute catering disasters.
Jim's up front, talking to Mark and pinching the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. But then he looks up and sees Ryan sitting alone, seems to make up his mind about something, and heads in Ryan's direction. Oh, great.
But Pam hangs up the phone and comes and intercepts Jim before he can reach Ryan, touching his arm a few feet away. "That was the caterer," she says to Jim. "I guess instead of salmon we're having swordfish."
"Oh," Jim says. "Well, that's okay, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Pam says. She seems stressed out. "Hey, you picked up the centerpieces for the reception this afternoon, right?"
"Oh," Jim says, in a voice like something horrifying has just dawned on him. "Um. Whoops."
"Jim!" Pam says. "How could you forget? I called and reminded you this morning!"
Ryan remembers this argument, how the script is supposed to go. Now Jim should come back with a promise to get them tomorrow morning instead, and an excuse maybe about being hungover, and maybe say something about how she shouldn't flip out so much. Then they can yell for a little bit and both blow off some steam, and everybody will feel better afterwards. Pam and Ryan had this kind of stressed out argument like 30 times when they were married, and it's no big deal.
So Ryan's really surprised when Jim just kind of stands there silently, his lips tightening, and that instead of saying something rude back, he turns on his heel and walks away.
Well, that's... something. Pam stands there looking sort of bereft, like she's not quite sure what happened and has no idea what to do now. Wow. Ryan wonders if their really terrible conflict-resolution skills came up in pre-marital counseling.
Pam glances over at Ryan and glares. "Oh, don't sit there smirking," she says. She's clearly some combination of angry and embarrassed and upset, and he doesn't really blame her. Between the stress and the non-fight and Ryan witnessing the whole thing, he can see why she's actually on the verge of angry tears.
"Sorry," Ryan says, getting up. He digs a Kleenex out of his pocket and hands it to her. "It's okay, Pamela," he says in an undertone. "Don't cry."
"God, shut up," she says, taking the Kleenex from him and wiping at her eyes. Her voice is shaky, and he tentatively rubs her back a little bit. She doesn't pull away, but she doesn't make eye contact either, just keeps taking deep breaths and trying to pull herself together.
It only takes a few seconds for her to calm down. "Okay," she says. "I have to go find Jim."
"Okay," Ryan says, and watches her walk off towards the house, still carrying the Kleenex wadded up in her hand.
The camera is pointed right at him, and he glances sidelong at it. Yeah, quite a reunion special.
The rehearsal finally starts about fifteen minutes later, after Pam and Jim have come back out of the house looking like they're okay again. He doesn't know if that means they talked about it, or that they didn't. Either way, Ryan watches the wedding party walk down the aisle, doofy slow steps, looking even more ridiculous in their casual clothes. Lori waves at him a little bit as she passes him. He smiles at her.
He turns around to watch Pam walk in, and is surprised to see Michael Scott grab the arm her dad isn't holding and start walking down the aisle with both of them. Pam's eyes widen and she jerks her elbow away, but Michael doesn't give up that easily. Ryan has no idea where Michael came from, but then he sees Gene from the documentary walk around the side of the house looking sort of smug and amused, and oh. That would add some drama to the proceedings. Unscrupulous bastards. Ryan briefly feels guilty for starting the whole camera thing up again.
"Michael," Pam hisses. "Let go." Ryan sees her look meaningfully at Jim, like, do something, but Jim's just standing at the front like he has no clue what course of action to take.
"Okay, okay," Michael says. He lets go of Pam, but he doesn't sit down or go away. Instead he raises both his hands and says, "I'd like to make a toast."
Ryan looks back to Jim, but everybody up front, especially the minister, looks too surprised to do anything. And Jim, maybe predictably, is just making a face at the camera. So that's still going on.
Ryan rolls his eyes. "Hey, Michael," he says, standing up. "Why don't you come over here and sit with me?"
"What?" Michael says. "No, I'm making a toast."
"It's, uh, not really toast time," Ryan says. He walks over to take Michael by the arm. "Here, come watch with me."
He physically sits Michael down and takes his seat next to him. "Okay?" Ryan says. He kind of waves to the minister, like, carry on.
"Ryan," Michael whispers. "I'm just - I'm really touched you want me to sit with you."
Ryan nods at him as noncommittally as he can. When he glances back at Pam, she's giving him the most grateful look he's ever seen. He smiles and shrugs at her.
The rest of the rehearsal goes off with hardly a hitch - Ryan has to keep a hand on the back of Michael's neck to keep him sitting down, which is not really the direction he was hoping his relationship with Michael would go, and at one point, he has to put his hand over Michael's mouth. But it's worth it, to do for Pam. Or he thinks so until Michael starts licking his palm.
"Oh my God," Ryan says, and jerks his hand away. Ew. He rubs his hand on his jeans and thinks about all the ways he's going to kill Gene.
After the rehearsal wraps up, everybody's headed to get changed for the rehearsal dinner, and he doesn't even really get a chance to talk to Pam. She mouths "thank you" at him from across the yard, though, so that's something. But then she holds hands with Jim and goes into the house with him, so that's something else.
He thinks about going to the rehearsal dinner, too, but what's he going to do there? Look like a pathetic idiot some more? Instead he calls his parents and ask if they still want to go out to dinner together, and suspects he might be getting depressed. Rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, it's all so horribly real, like it's actually happening.
His parents very tactfully don't ask anything about Pam or the wedding, which he appreciates. They talk about his job, and his brother's new baby, and the latest season of American Idol. It's calming, like life goes on or whatever. Even if he stays divorced and loses Pam forever, he can always come back here and talk about American Idol with two people who love him.
Oh God, he's getting depressed again.
After they get home from the restaurant, Ryan doesn't quite know what to do. He watches a Seinfeld rerun with his dad, feeling antsy and at loose ends. When the credits run, he gets up.
"I think I'm going to go for a drive," Ryan says. His dad looks sympathetic and nods, and on his way out the door Ryan kisses his mom on the cheek.
He doesn't know where he's going, exactly. Wandering the streets of Scranton, Pennsylvania - he's been doing that a lot lately, it feels like. He rolls down the windows and makes turns without thinking about them too much, and finally ends up at St. Anthony Elementary School, pulling up across the street from the playground.
The place where Pam first kissed him. Well, he's going to finish up the weekend in style, anyway, brooding here.
He gets out of the car and runs his hands through his hair, probably messing it up beyond repair. Oh well, who cares, no one's going to see him. The swings and jungle gym are all still there, just like he remembers them, empty and dark. There's something about a playground at night that makes him feel like he should be smoking under streetlights. But he doesn't smoke, so. Instead he goes over to the third swing and sits down, moving himself back and forth gently with his feet on the sand.
The night's clear and warm, and he can see a lot of stars from where he sits, all bright and unmistakable. You can hardly see any stars at all in New York, there's so much light, so it's kind of strange and surprising they're all still up there, shining away. Like the world hasn't changed as much as it feels like it has since he moved to New York. The moon's round and full, and it's quiet, way quieter than it ever is in the city. He hears an owl hooting, somewhere over in the trees.
A car passes, headlights flickering over him as they turn onto the street that runs past the playground, and Ryan swings gently back and forth, thinking. The wedding's tomorrow - does he crash it? He doesn't think they ask if anyone has any reason these two shouldn't be joined together anymore, and even if they did, he doesn't think "The groom is a douchebag" is the kind of reason the minister would find valid.
Oh well. He knew coming down here that it was a suicide mission. At least he tried. He put up a good fight.
He makes a divot in the sand with his foot, then smoothes it back over again. Maybe he'll just go back to New York in the morning, skip the wedding altogether.
Another car comes around the corner, engine rumbling, but instead of continuing down the street, it slows and parks right behind Ryan's car. Ryan holds onto the chains of the swing, still swinging slightly, and watches as Pam gets out of the driver's seat. She's alone, still dressed for the rehearsal dinner, a green dress, a pretty one he's never seen before. He knows if Pam's here, the camera's probably not far away, but figures they parked around the corner and are sneaking up to try to give him and Pam the illusion of privacy. Well, what else is new. Learn a fresh trick, Greg.
He watches her walk towards him, her head down, holding a clutch in her right hand.
"Hi," he says, when she gets close enough to hear him.
She stops in front of him, and finally makes eye contact. "You weren't at your parents' house," she says.
"How did they know I'd be here?" Ryan asks. He's genuinely a little confused, since when he left he hadn't even known he'd be there.
"They didn't," Pam says. She sets her clutch down on the sand and sits on the swing next to him. "I guessed."
Ryan twists himself with his foot so he's half facing her, then lets himself untwist again. "Good guess," he says. "First one?"
"Well, I know how sentimental you are," she says.
Ryan's sort of offended. "I am not," he says.
Pam raises her eyebrows at him, then pointedly looks around at where they are. "Oh really," she says. Very dry, Pamela Beesly, very dry.
"Shut up," Ryan says.
"This is right about where it happened, right?" Pam says. "This swing?"
Ryan decides to play dumb. "Where what happened?" he says.
"I like how you're pretending you're not pathetically in love with me now," Pam says. "That horse has left the barn, Ryan Howard."
Ryan tries not to smile. "Yeah," he says. "This is where you kissed me for the first time. We were standing up, though. You'd been on the swings, and you jumped off and landed right in front of me. You were laughing."
"Oh yeah?" Pam says. She stands up again and walks to position herself right about where she'd been that day. "Like, right about here?"
Ryan looks at her. "Yeah," he says. "You were there." He gets up and moves to where he had been standing, putting his hands on her arms to move her slightly to exactly where she'd been. "And I was here," he says.
So now they're standing really close, his hands still on her arms, right in each other's personal space. He can feel his whole body sort of lighting up, thrumming all over, like he's ten times more alive than he is normally, aware of all his fingers, of the span of his chest. Aware of Pam's body, too, the curve of her waist, the goosebumps on her upper arms, the ridge of her collarbone.
"And that's when I kissed you," Pam says, really quietly.
"Uh huh," Ryan says. He looks at her mouth, the line of it, the dip of her upper lip. The streetlights illuminate her face just enough so he can see her, though her eyes are still in shadow.
"Um, I called off the wedding," Pam says. "I told Jim I couldn't do it."
Ryan feels a thousand things at once, so much he's a little light-headed, happiness so intense it almost hurts, like his body's going to fly apart with it. "Did you?" Ryan says. He can't even think what's he's saying, with his whole body expanding like this. She called off the wedding. She called off the wedding. She's standing here so close she could kiss him, and she's not marrying Jim Halpert at all.
"Yeah," Pam says.
"Well, that's - that's good," Ryan starts, but Pam kisses him before he can say anything else. It's so easy and familiar, kissing her, like falling off a log into the best water he's ever felt. He puts his palm against her face, feels her cheek getting hot as she blushes under his hand, and she makes the little noise that's his favorite from her, a happy, involuntary noise.
When they finally pull apart, Ryan grins at her, too happy to stop himself. "So that's two out of three weddings you've called off a day or two before," he says.
Pam hits him on the arm, gently. "Asshole."
"I'm the only one you can actually stand to marry, huh?" he says.
Pam shakes her head at him, but she's smiling. "Looks that way," she says.
"What made you decide not to go through with it?" Ryan asks.
Pam shrugs and kisses him again. And once he's kissing her, he doesn't want to stop, so it's a minute or two before she can answer him.
When she pulls away she puts her hands against his chest, smoothing the fabric of his t-shirt. "I like this shirt," she says. "It brings out your eyes."
"I know," Ryan says. "Why didn't you end up marrying him?" He really wants to know, is the thing.
Pam's hands are still smoothing over his chest, and she's looking at the t-shirt logo, which says "Martha's Vineyard." They got it two summers ago, when they went out there for the day while Ryan was at a conference in Boston.
Pam bites her lower lip, then finally says, "I guess I thought we could pick up right where we left off, back before he moved away." She looks a little sad. "But we've changed and four months isn't really enough... I don't know. It wasn't the way I thought it would be. And I don't think I'm really the person he thought I.... Well. I don't know."
"Ah," Ryan says. He puts his hands on her waist and pulls her in closer again, kisses her lightly. Her lips are soft, familiar. "And because you're crazy about me, right?" he says as he pulls back.
Pam smiles and rolls her eyes. "Because I'm crazy, yes," she says.
"Ha, ha," Ryan says, and kisses her. When he pulls back this time, he says, very softly, "Marry me again?"
"You sure you want me?" Pam says. "Because I don't know, your feelings seem pretty ambiguous."
Ryan laughs. "Shut up."
Pam smiles at him, smiles and smiles. "I was hoping you'd ask me that," she says, quiet.
"Yeah?" Ryan says. He thinks about the first time he proposed, on 36th Street in the cold, and brushes a wisp of Pam's hair out of her face. "So?" he says.
"Yeah," Pam says. "Yeah, I think I'll risk it."
When Ryan finally finishes kissing her again, he catches a glimpse of the camera over her shoulder, Randall hiding behind a tree.
Ryan looks right at the lens, as deadpan as he can. "Sorry, guys," he says. "She's with me."
**
END
To the very belated epilogue