What You Find While Looking For Something Else

Chapter: Just Yours
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit made.
A/N: Set after the disaster of Jim joining the FTC.


Sorry, she mouths to her frowning companions as they look at her in exasperation.

Meanwhile, Jim's expression crashes and burns.

For the first time, the Finer Things Club disbands in a sour mood.

The next day, Pam's in the kitchen, shockingly alone for once as she watches her Lean Cuisine meal spin around in the microwave.

Toby sidles into the room from the annex, looking uncertain. She smiles at him. "Hey, you."

"Hey." He returns her smile with a melancholy twist of his lips.

As usual when talking to Toby outside the club, she finds a kind of void in the conversation where his part should be, and, as usual, she fills it up. "Sorry about... all that yesterday. I was just trying to cheer Jim up."

"Oh, that's okay. We have to kick you out now though."

The delivery is so deadpan, it takes her a second to register that it's only a joke.

"I understand," she says, letting her head droop in shame. "The Club is very exclusive, after all." Another smile ruins her acting, and Toby grins weakly in return.

The microwave beeps behind her, and she turns to delicately take the cardboard tray out and set it on the counter.

She's aware that Toby's watching her, but constant filming has eroded her self-consciousness to some extent and she doesn't really think anything of it.

She feels the vacuum again, and it's drawing words into her mouth but she isn't sure it she should say them.

Then again... It's Toby. The innocuous HR guy. Her friend.

She peels the lid off the tray to vent the steam. "It's weird," she says, still looking at her food. "I thought sharing the kind of books I like with Jim would make us closer, but... it didn't." There's more to say, but it's gotten bottlenecked in her throat, overlapping sentiments she isn't sure she wants to share.

"It's okay to have something that's just yours," Toby says quietly.

She looks over her shoulder and catches his eye. He smiles again, only it looks a little more sincere, while the curve that finds its way onto her lips has grown slightly melancholy.

"Thanks," she says simply.

He shrugs a little. "No problem," he says in his simple, resigned way, and slips back into the annex like the end of a ghost story.

As she picks up her lunch, she spots Jim heading purposefully towards her and her mind shifts into a different gear. It never occurs to her to wonder what Toby went into the break room for, anyway.


A/N II: Pam/Toby trumphs Pam/Jim any day of the week! There! I said it! Flame me if you like, but review!