august 2017
Office: office romance
A/N: so this is the prequel to my one-shot "Liquid Courage (or stupidity, whichever works)" but could be read as a stand alone. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the sorts.
Office Romance
By: Evelynhunters
Their story starts with shared smiles, hesitant glances, feeling (unrequited or not), and Pam's parents.
Pam Beasley only started to take environmental science when her parents urged her to have something other than art to fall on. She was pretty sure she would hate the class just by reputation alone (many people on the campus were aware of the strange behaviors of the teaching assistant) and Roy was in business and that sounded way more useful than 'environmental science'. The fact she was a freshman also didn't calm her nerves. But she heard it was easy and she needed something so her parents would get off her back.
She looks at her wrinkled schedule and her watch. Ten minutes early. Ten minutes early isn't that bad.
But instead of trees and plants all over the room what she finds in a room filled with paper and a virtually empty class except for two seats. Even from the doorway she could hear them bickering.
"Security in this college is a joke. Last year I came to work with my spud-gun in a duffel bag," a boy with glasses and a raised eyebrow tersely said, "I sat at my desk all day with a rifle that shoots potatoes at 60 pounds per square inch. Can you imagine if I was deranged?" The other boy next to him nodded mock-seriously and doesn't seem surprised or disapproving of his actions.
Yep. She was regretting this already. And by the tone of this guy's voice, she was pretty sure he was deranged.
"But Dwight, what if the security guards were secretly in on it? What if they're planning an entire envision on the campus, on this class, on you?" The other boy whispered while making a paranoid face.
"Of course not, Jim," Dwight started in a condescending tone. "It is every policemen's duty to protect. I, as sheriff deputy-"
"-Volunteer sheriff deputy-"
"Have taken a vow to only use my powers to protect the innocent, fight evil, and help those in need." Dwight finished with a stare and a face full of pride and duty.
"But what if they weren't really security guards, Dwight. What if they were pretending to be security guards so we would be comfortable and then attack mankind with cylons and-!" Jim's voice rose higher and higher and Dwight almost seemed like he believed him.
Pam can imagine her future now: No, Mr. Therapist, I don't believe it's my fault I'm insane. It's my parents' fault for making me take environmental science.
She must have signed or make some sort of a sound (or Dwight was really paranoid) because suddenly she snapped out of her day dream to find a potato hurling at her head (at sixty pounds per square inch, she recalls.)
She narrowly dodges the projectile, but the person behind her, the teaching assistant, wasn't so fortunate.
"OW! Dammit Dwight I told you to stop bringing the potato slinger to class!" Michael howled and clutched his nose.
"It's a spud gun." Dwight says as he races to Michael, shooting her a dirty look as if she were the one at fault.
She's regretting this so much it hurts.
She trudges back to where the other boy, Jim, sat, keeping on eye on Dwight at all times just in case he actually blamed her.
"I am so sorry," she hears behind her and turns around, "because you're never going to go back to the time before you met Dwight."
"Well, I wasn't going to forget about a potato either, so it's been a memorable first day." She smiles. Jim looked like one of those boy in high school who had floppy hair and was popular and good at sports. Like Roy but with a better haircut, she muses.
"Yeah," he chuckles, "he does that sometimes. I'm trying to convince him that all the security guards were Cylon Centurions."
"Cylon Centurions...like from..." Pam scoured her brain for what it was from, "from Battlestar Galactica?" She briefly remembers her sister hloving the show when they were young.
"Yeah," he said, surprised that she understood the reference, "he spends most of his time talking about beets, bears, and how the revival series of Battlestar Galactica wasn't as good as the original."
"It isn't!" They heard from across the room, "They made Starbuck into a girl!"
The few students shuffling in didn't even jump at the shouting. In fact, most of them looked like upperclassmen and were gray and depressed, like they were used to these kinds of antics.
"I'm Jim," he says with an awkward hand out in front of him to shake, "I'd invite you to sit next to us, but frankly you seem too nice and pretty for Dwight to ruin." He says with a lopsided grin.
Pretty? Boyfriend, Pam, you have a boyfriend, she reminded herself.
"I'm Pam," she says with a grin of her own to match and shakes his hand.