The Screening

By Teala373

Chapter 2: Popcorn, Dundies, & That Jealousy Thing

Pam trudged up the walk to her apartment door with a sigh. She was annoyed and disappointed that Roy had just dropped her off in the parking lot. He was meeting Darryl and a few of their mutual friends at a local sports bar that supposedly served the county's best chicken wings. Pam had already been forced to eat pizza and chicken wings two previous nights this week. All she wanted was to curl up on the couch with a nice bowl of soup. She had hoped that Roy would have wanted to snuggle with her on the couch and watch TV with her. Maybe they could have an actual conversation.

Dropping her purse and keys on the floor, Pam shuffled through the small apartment, picking up Pepsi cans, beer bottles, pizza crusts on napkins, socks, and crumpled bits of paper that Roy had littered the living room with. She gathered the small piles of dirty laundry strewn throughout the bathroom and bedroom, then separated them into the divided hamper where her dirty clothes always resided.

She washed all the dishes in the sink, and then cursed under her breath when she found two cereal bowls and three small plates that Roy had left on his nightstand, the kitchen table, and the breakfast nook. She cursed again when she tripped over his bowling bag that was not put away in the front hall closet.

Looking at the clock, she realized she could get a couple loads of laundry in before the show she wanted to watch would begin. With a defeated, weary sigh, she began to head towards the divided hamper in the linen closet when something made her stop. Turning towards the front door, she focused in on her purse, carelessly tossed on the floor.

It felt like it took her forever to walk the small distance over towards it and pull back the zipper. Inside, the black spine of a DVD case stared back at her. She pulled the case out and stared at it for a moment, the film crew's emblem staring back at her on the front of the case, wondering why she felt so strange holding this object in her hand.

"Next time you get the TV to yourself, check out this special sneak peak," Tim, the main camera operator had told her as he hid the DVD under a stack of papers in her in-bin. "Don't let anybody else see it. It's just for you."

At the time, Pam thought maybe there were special scenes with Dwight and Angela, or other funny moments from when she and Jim had played pranks on Dwight. She still, to an extent, thought that now, but she couldn't bring herself to smile or laugh. She just stood there, looking at the DVD case, while a very strange feeling, that she couldn't identify, washed over her.

"Okay, the options look like hot dogs, old Chinese take-out, even older Chinese take-out, or week old pizza. Either option comes with a choice of chocolate syrup or hot sauce."

When there was no response, Jim pulled his head out of the refrigerator and looked around the kitchen area. He then noticed that his roommate was no longer sitting on the counter, but was instead talking on his cell phone in the living room.

Shrugging, Jim took one of the countless bottles of beer from the top shelf of the fridge and twisted the cap off. A few moments later, he heard Mark's cell phone snap shut.

"Dude, were you saying something?" he called from the living room.

"Yeah," Jim called back, "do you want me to run through the dinner options again, or do you want me to skip to the part where we should just eat hot dogs," his face suddenly brightened, as if a light bulb had gone off over his head, "there's ham, cheese and bread – I could grill us up some pretty sweet sandwiches!"

Mark walked into the kitchen, an apologetic look already forming on his face. "I'm sorry, but Heather just called and she's making pasta at her place. She wants me to come over, but..."

"No, no, no," Jim held his hands up, "go, please. Pasta with your girlfriend is much better than...," he trailed off while gesturing towards the fridge.

Biting his lip, Mark looked back and forth between the fridge and Jim. "Why don't you come with me? Heather won't mind. She always makes extra, anyway."

Smiling appreciatively, Jim shook his head. "No, you go and be with your best gal. I'll be fine. Besides, I like when I have the place to myself so I can watch TV in my underwear."

"Why don't you have someone over?" Mark suggested, feeling bad that he was leaving Jim alone for the fourth night in a row. "Who was that cute girl that was here...?"

Jim's shoulder's rose in a defensive gesture before dropping again. "Uh... Katy... yeah... she and I aren't really..."

"No, not her," Mark interrupted. His brow wrinkled slightly. "She was... I mean, she was cute and all... but, she was a little too much, ya know?"

"Oh yeah... I know."

Mark then rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as he tried to remember the girl he wanted Jim to invite over. "It's not Katy, it's the other girl. Ya know, she was here for the party. Real cute, real sweet. Paula? No. Pam? Yeah, Pam. What about her? You seem to talk about her a lot."

Clearing his throat, Jim began looking everywhere, but at Mark. "Pam, yeah. She's great, really great. We're friends, but she's, ya know, kind of with someone else, so..."

"Really?" this caused an eyebrow raise. "Wow, that's so odd. She seemed so into you, and then you two, like, disappeared in your room for a while, so I thought maybe there was a thing..."

"No!" Jim's voice came out louder than he meant for it to, startling his roommate. "I mean... no. There's no thing. We're just friends..." he mumbled.

Realizing it was an awkward topic, Mark began making the motions to leave. As he put his coat on, an object on the table caught his eye.

"Oh, hey, Jim," he called out, "I almost forgot to tell you!" He picked the object up off the table and set it on the counter next to where Jim was standing. "Before you got home, some guy dropped this off for you."

Jim looked at the black DVD case with a familiar look logo on the cover. "What guy?"

"I don't know, some guy. He said to make sure you watched it."

A questioningly look covered Jim's face. He started to ask Mark more about it, but Mark was halfway out the door. He set down his beer and picked up the case. Popping it open, he found a burned DVD with no label.

"Why do I having a feeling that if I watch this, I will die in seven days?" He asked out loud to no one in particular.

Pam had made herself a bowl of canned soup and set it down on the breakfast nook next to the DVD case. She had slowly eaten two spoonfuls when she decided she couldn't take it anymore. Abandoning her soup, she quickly located a bag of popcorn, threw it in the microwave, then raced to the bedroom to change into her favorite pair of pajamas.

Within 5 minutes, she was seated on the couch in her Wonder Woman flannel pajamas (an impulsive buy while at the outlet mall). She set the bowl of popcorn in her lap and started the DVD.

A familiar face appeared on the screen.

Having lost his appetite for hot dogs, Jim rummaged through the cupboards. He was happy to find microwave popcorn. While he waited for the bag to pop, he located a small bag of M&Ms, which he got half way through by the time the popcorn was ready.

Finally, he was settled on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and the mysterious DVD starting.

He was surprised at the face that appeared on the screen.

The first half hour of the DVD, as far as Pam could tell, showed clips of all her interaction with Jim. She laughed at all the obnoxious pranks they played on Dwight and all the inside jokes they created. She sighed a little at the end of one laugh, realizing that she and Jim hadn't talked or hung out at work much anymore.

She pursed her lips together and realized that things hadn't been the same since the "booze cruise" Michael had taken them on. There seemed to be a weird tension around her and Jim. He seemed distant since confessing his former crush on her and the "sort of" fight they had when Jim tried to confront her about not enrolling in the design seminar.

She hit the pause button and stared down into her popcorn bowl. Jim's friendship meant a lot to her and without it, she felt empty. All of her high school and college friends were out of town. Though she kept in touch with them and many of them were in the wedding, Jim was really her only friend in Scranton.

The realization, and what came with that, weighed to heavily on Pam's mind. She shook her head lightly to clear the thoughts and attempted to resume viewing the DVD. As she looked up at the screen, she realized that she had paused the DVD right on a shot of her face as she watched Jim drive off with Katy on their first date.

Pam saw something in her face that she tried so hard to suppress Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. She saw her true feelings for Jim.

"I'm just upset with Roy for not staying at home," she muttered aloud, trying to convince herself that she her feelings for Jim weren't real. She looked back up at the screen and felt her reserve crumble. The footage she was watching was around a year old. Her being upset with Roy now had nothing to do with her feelings then.

She shook her head lightly again. "We're just friends," she muttered, "just friends."

Resuming the DVD, she was happy when the scene ended, changing to the day of the Dundie awards where Michael was forcing her to go through previous award footage.

Jim stared, mouth slacken, at the scene he had just paused on. He didn't want to give in too much to hope, but he could swear that Pam was upset and jealous when he had taken Katy out for the first time.

He rewound the scene in the parking lot and paused the DVD when Pam's face came into view.

"Yep," the corners of his mouth stretched and his eyes began to sparkle, "she was definitely jealous."

"Oh!" The small exclamation fell from Pam's mouth as the scene ended and changed to the actual Dundie award ceremony. She hadn't realized that Jim had gone to bat for her and tricked Michael into changing her award for the year.

She felt a slight rise of heat in her cheeks as she began to remember other times when Jim had defended her, or helped her escape awkward encounters with Michael and Dwight.

'Roy never does that', a little voice in the back of her mind quipped.

"Shhhh," Pam said aloud, trying to stop her brain from continually comparing Roy and Jim.

Focusing back on the screen, she realized she had just spaced out through most of the Dundie award festivities. She reached for the remote to hit rewind just as her speech was ending. She laughed as she watched herself screech a victory yell into the microphone.

Just as her finger hovered over the rewind button, she watched herself kiss Jim.

A pleasant look overtook Jim's face as he watched the Dundie awards. He normally hated the Dundies. He told himself it was because they were so lame and a waste of a perfectly good night. The truth was, he hated that Roy was there. He and Pam always sat at a separate table, and he never really got to talk to her much. This was the first Dundie awards he ever remembered thoroughly enjoying himself at.

He nearly chocked on his beer as he watched Michael take credit for Pam falling off the bar stool.

Pam rewound the video and watched it again from the beginning. She caught things she hadn't caught before because up until all of a few moments ago, she was in denial that there was anything between her and Jim.

She watched how awkward Jim became around Roy, when Roy kissed her or talked about plans they had. She watched how happy Jim was just spending time with, how the simple act of her falling asleep on his shoulder changed his horrid day into a good one. She also caught how subconsciously in love with him she had been.

"Gawd, it's so obvious," she whispered aloud as the DVD came back again to the Dundie awards, "no wonder people talked... how could I be so... stupid..."

Her eyes widened as she watched Jim evade Roy as he tried to meet her mother, then smile when he overheard being asked about.

Jim was alternating between smiling and laughing at good memories, and becoming very quiet whenever something he didn't like occurred.

The quiet started with the conversation he had with Pam after the Dundie awards. He wanted to know the question she meant to ask him before she caught sight of the cameras. Then, he felt embarrassed as he watched himself stand in the parking lot like a lovesick puppy as she was driven away.

When the scene switched to show he and Pam organizing games while Michael and Dwight were out checking his new place, he found himself smiling and laughing again. Quiet came when he saw how rattled Pam became over Angela's explanation of Pam Pong.

His interviews with Pam in the parking lot, as well as a conversation with a glum Dwight, due to a fire Ryan had accidentally started, brought back more smiles, until he frowned when Pam kissed Roy.

He paused the DVD on a scene of himself and Pam dressed up last Halloween as his mind began to wander. He rewound to watch Pam's interview about Katy over again. He then skipped back several chapters to watch her interview the first day they all had met Katy. Skipping forward again, he replayed Pam kissing Roy as he got in Katy's car.

"Yep," Jim stated as he sported a smile once more, "definitely jealous."

Pam hugged a throw pillow to her chest as she watched more excruciatingly embarrassed moments. She cringed as she watched herself chase Jim around the office, dressed like a cat, no less, to get him to understand that she didn't really want him to leave. She groaned when she watched her flippant behavior at the dojo when she and Jim were horsing around.

Pausing the DVD again, Pam got up and headed for the kitchen. If she didn't have a bottle of wine in the cupboard, then there was always Roy's beer in the fridge. She needed something to take the edge off.

"Interesting..." Jim mused as he watched the awkward moment between himself and Pam at the dojo. He hadn't realized that she had freaked out because Meredith had turned around to look at them. "What are you afraid of, Beesley..."