A/N: This was inspired, obviously, by the episode Joss directed. And I totally play up on the theme that was presented by a Jim prank: JIM IS A VAMPIRE. ZOMG.

His brain is working on over-time, which, lets face it, is no more of an occurrence than Michael being hilarious. But Dwight revs the motors of his already highly fast-thinking, pushing the limits of his genius.

Jim is a vampire.

He’d seen the evidence with his own two eyes, and while, yes, Schrute eyesight left some things to be desired, he has the best in corrective wear. He could see as well as every single person he knew--nay, better than every person he knew, including Michael—who wore contacts, even though he didn’t want anybody to know because he thought having ‘glasses’ made him ‘geeky’, even though Dwight tried to explain (varying tactics) that contacts i weren’t /i glasses, they were contacts, and even if they were, no way did it make Michael geeky.

Therefore, the collected evidence is solid.

The idea popped into his head sometime in the early AM, when thoughts of the oncoming new day were swirling around with thoughts of the previous, and suddenly. Suddenly, it all made perfect sense.

He would save Jim Halpert.

He would.

---

“Hello, Jim,” he tests early that same morning, gravely watching for signs of a sudden if not half-expected attack. Without a carved stake nearby (Creed had taken them home Friday night--something about gambling debts, or whatever) he has to rely solely on his martial arts training to counter-attack whatever vampiric assault might be thrown his way.

He has to be ready for literally ANYTHING, which is why he keeps a stealthily hidden hand at his desk drawer. Perhaps the mace might be needed to debilitate.

Jim sits down with a heavy sigh. “Mortal,” he greets.

Red flags immediately fly.

“How are you? You look…” Remarkably pale. Unearthly white, like the lower half of a well-nurtured beet. Like he’d been infused with demonic blood and is now a hollowed out shell of his former self, an inner-war of good vs. evil perpetually raging with all the strength of a relentlessly thrashing storm, merciless in the wrath of Mother Nature. He couldn’t say any of that, though, so he settles on, “…tired.”

“Man,” vampire Jim admits, “these work hours are seriously killing me.”

“Nine to five? But. That’s--”

“I know, it’s a normal work day, or whatever, but lately… I don’t know, lately I’ve just wanted to sleep all day. It doesn’t make any sense, I know. It’s like…” Dwight leans in close, spell-bound by Jim’s words, “--like I feel like I need to be i up /i at night.”

He has to try. He just has to. “Insomnia is a growing epidemic--”

“No,” Jim is quick to cut in, though he's convincing in his seems to realize his intensity and therefore calms himself enough to say, more flatly, “It’s not that. It’s this strong… unrelenting… almost primal NEED. Like, I couldn’t even sleep last night. At all. I was up all night--”

“Reading? Watching Letterman?” For the sake of humanity, Dwight HOPED. Gods of Kobal, he hoped.

“That’s the weird thing. It was like I needed to be OUTSIDE.”

“ No. ”

“Yes.”

He's gripping the edge of his desk tightly, his knuckles a stark color of white. “What did you DO?”

Vampire Jim shrugs, easy and without concern. “I went outside.”

Dwight sags against his chair, feeling boneless and nauseous. This is so much worse than any feasible scenario previously imagined, and he'd imagined a lot. The extinction of an entire town, eliminated by a hungry Jim Halpert. The mysterious disappearance of farm animals. Starbuck finding planet Earth and pilfering a Cylon raider to come kill the vampire Jim in some awesome display of otherworldly tactic, their supernatural sides battling in a fight to the death, with Starbuck and Dwight and various ninjas as the victors.

“What happened?” he eventually asks as his suspicion gets the better of him.

Jim gives it a moment of deep ponder. “I don’t know," he realizes. "It’s like… I blacked out or something. Everything’s a blur, you know?”

A solemn nod. A crushing weight.

“I’ve said too much,” Jim suddenly says, aware of their open surroundings. He sets his man-bag down and turns on the computer. The screen lights up. “I should get to work.”

“Yes,” Dwight agrees, though it's only half-mindedly, his brain swirling with this latest development, “you should.”

---

The exact idea comes to him at 12:42 pm, when he's discussing the intricacies to Angela.

She hadn’t got it. Any of it. Said--in that amazingly huffy way that women tend to get once they’re entirely convinced of something and stay stubborn in their unrelenting insistence that they, the inferior and historically proven to be less competent female, are correct--that Dwight was being incredibly ridiculous. Did he really think her to be so naive? Did he go to sleep watching his Battlestar Whateverica and have some foolish dream?

Uh, no.

She wouldn’t even hear him out. The multitude of proof he provided? She rolled her eyes at. The evidence, the hard, cold facts… she wouldn’t even consider their possibility, discarding them as falsehoods with as much rapidity as they were given.

After she had left him in the breakroom, a lioness pissed off at its mate and probably plotting its revenge attack in the form of Bible study and cat/yarn playtime, the idea had hit.

If there was one thing Dwight knew about vampires it was that they didn’t have a soul. It’s what made them such a danger to the general populace. Well, that and their official stance as being illegal aliens. Once you were dead, you pretty much had no basic civilian rights. You might as well cancel every credit card you owned and go live on Anartica. With the ice caps, and whatever. The Yetti.

Anyway, the idea that Jim was floating around this big cosmic world without his soul... essentially, without a work visa, well, it made Dwight uneasy.

So he decides, at exactly 12:42pm, that he will give Jim his soul back.

---

Dammit. The Orb of Thesulah. Where is he supposed to find one of those at? Matches, herbs, candles, heck, even the animal bones he could gather. The beet farm, after all, is a well-congested compost to deceased rodents. But the Orb? They don’t even have one on E-Bay, at least not one that isn’t marginally over-priced, and there is no way Jim is worth that much money, ever.

In front of him, a desk width's apart, vampire Jim yawns, making a great show of stretching. He's probably way beyond exhausted, since he's nocturnal now. His innards are probably screaming for the sweet release of sleep.

As if his instincts are magnetized to Dwight’s thoughts, Jim appears at Dwight’s right, a sudden apparition that is silent enough to temporarily startle him. From the inside, though, because Dwight never, not since he was a small, defenseless 6-year old whose upperarm strength was too pitiful for even diligent riposting, lets his surprise register. As far as outside appearances go, Dwight is in a constant state of disalarm.

Advantage: him.

“What website are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Dwight mutters.

False. Dwight is looking up the ingredients he will need to give Jim his soul back.

“Really? ‘Cause it kinda looks like you’re looking at--”

“I’m working,” Dwight insists, throwing a scathing glare Jim’s way. Maybe Jim is a vampire, but he's still an infuriating one who asks too many questions and likes to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, and Dwight has no tolerance OR patience for that.

“Are you sure? I mean, Buffy--”

“THAT,” Dwight cuts him off, minimizing the website on his computer screen as quickly as his superior motor skills allow him, “is classified.“ An idea enters his head. “She’s a client of mine.”

“Really? Buffy?”

“Yes.”

Jim makes a face. Repeats the name, with great recollection. “Buffy.” A cringe. “I don’t know why, but, yeah, that name creeps me out. A lot.”

“It’s just a name.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s the weird part. But, it’s just. It’s so… familiar. For some really strange reason.”

Dwight shrugs, nonchalant as can be. “Lots of people have the name Buffy.”

Not true. Not true at all. It's probably one of the Top 10 Least Popular Names for this part of the region.

“Here? In Scranton?”

“…yes.”

“Yeah. You’re right. That’s probably it. But, still.” Jim backs up a step. “I think I need to go… collect myself. I’m feeling a little off right now, you know, kinda… nervous, like there’s someone out there who wants to kill my kind.”

“Yes,” Dwight understands. “Go. Take a breather, Jim.”

“You’re right. I could definitely use a snack." He stops. "Wait, you didn’t mean eat a... never mind. Do me a favor and forget I said anything, okay?”

And then Jim leaves, much to Dwight’s horror, heading into the dreary unknown, and as he does so, Dwight first understands that this is a battle far larger than even he can handle alone. He realizes he has to employ other devices, if this is going to work.

Dammit.

---

Dwight settles himself in front of the reception area, keeping a gauging, cautious eye on Jim. Given the building's layout, it’s the most dependable, reliable standing situation, as far as defences go. From here he has a straightforward view of the offender with absolutely zero interference, visual or otherwise, and Jim? Well, Jim would have the lesser position, wouldn’t he? His back to Dwight, sitting on a likely faulty swivel chair, one with only minimal pivoting capability, while also wearing shoes with non-rubber soles.

Dwight sneers to himself. If only half the office came prepared for ANY number of emergencies (natural, man-made, and supernatural alike) it’d be a more competent work atmosphere. As it is...

He garners the focus of the receptionist. “Attention,” he commands, very low. She starts to look up, like Pavlov's life-work trained to obey the verbal demands of those more dominant and masculine, but he cuts her off, quick. “No!” A whisper, yet a shout. “Do i not /i look at me.”

This time the mutt disobeys. In olden days, that contumacy would've required immediate punishment, likely in the form of lashings, or prolonged starvation. “What--?”

A fierce, unshakable murmur. “Dammit, Pam! Avert your eyes! Avoid direct contact!”

She dutifully obeys, a little warily, staring instead at the blank space before her. It calms Dwight down, just a fraction of an inch. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jim shift slightly. Suspicious. But then Pam says, very quiet, “What are we doing?” and it refocuses his attention.

“We,” he corrects, “aren’t doing a thing.” Aware of the oddity of this encounter, because, frankly, the idea that Dwight would openly converse with the secretary is hilarious, Dwight pops the lid on the candy bin and starts digging for something even slightly savory. “Fact:” he notes. “I work alone. Fact: I need your help.”

“But—“ Again her disobedience shows, and she looks up.

“LISTEN,” he seethes through a clenched jaw, forceful enough to make her gaze flutter back to the empty space ahead of her. He'd throw her a dog biscuit, if he had one, just to keep her so well-behaved. “Something has arisen." His voice is low again. "Something important. This is where you come in. Meet me in the break-area in t-minus 15 minutes, and come alone.”

Dwight abandons the candy bin momentarily to haul himself across the desk, looking her in the eye. She backs away a little, because she is a woman and therefore inherently timid, but he still prevails. “This is important. Do you understand my instructions?”

Even though her eyes are wide and her skin is pale (makes sense, her being a redhead), she affirms with a slow, earnest nod.

He notices that her gaze flitters up and over his shoulder, to Jim, and there’s a sudden, fleeting thought of, maybe she’s one of them too, maybe it’s too late, maybe he already got to her, maybe he already got to EVERYONE, maybe even Michael, maybe the WORLD--but he pushes it away before it fully blooms. He can’t risk simple paranoia. It’d infiltrate everything, like a disease. Like syphilis.

Pam eventually says, with great seriousness, “I understand.”

He taps the desktop with the flat of his hands, pleased. “Excellent.” Then, with a parting look that warns against treachery, he grabs a handful of the candy--further pretense--and returns to his desk.

Jim doesn’t look up, but he says, “What was that about?” after a moment.

Dwight practically has a black belt in Evasion. Like when Angela corners him like a caged cougar, asking him if he believes in Divine Intervention and Serendipity, which obviously he does not, he's always able to successfully evade her. So it makes sense that he's able to further skillfully dawdle in false innocence, wondering, “What was what about?”

Jim taps at the keyboard, casual as can be. “You were talking to Pam. Weren't you?”

The candy is getting warm in Dwight’s palm. Wet and sticky. Like a lie. “...No.”

Now Jim looks up, doubtful. Full on inquisition.

Feeling transluscent, as far as true intentions go, Dwight slyly tacks on, “I was getting candy.” As proof, he holds up the smatter of melted jellybeans. “I... have something of a sweet tooth. It's genetic.”

“Huh.” Jim considers this. Then he shrugs, “Okay” and returns to work.

The relief that floods Dwight’s body is near tangible.

TBC