Disclaimer: Don't own a thing. Not Karen, not Pam, not Jim, not Michael, not Ikea, not even a pair of John Krasinski's boxers. I only own the plot, and even that is up for legal review. Habeas corpus?

I. Renovations 

“Phyllis, I need a favor.”

Phyllis glanced up at Pam through her Professor Trelawney glasses and smiled sweetly. Pam tried hard not to think “grandmother” and instead focused on the stack of Beyonce CDs on the corner of Phyllis’ desk.

“Well, I had my apartment repainted yesterday, and they used this new type of paint that gives me headaches, so I need someplace to sleep. Just for tonight, I promise. Do you have an extra bed somewhere, or…?”

An unhealthy gleam appeared in Phyllis’ eye. “Well, honey…” she leaned in, and Pam followed suit. “I would let you stay over, but Bob’s living with me for now while we finish the house.” She winked, and something in Pam’s stomach flipped over. “You know how it is.”

“Oh!” Pam shook her head violently and smiled wide. “Oh, that’s totally fine then. It’s okay. Really. Honestly. Thanks though. I’ll find somewhere else, and…yeah.”

Karen turned from where she had been shuffling papers behind Stanley’s desk. “Oh, you need someplace to sleep, Pam?”

“Uh…”

“I’ve got a futon couch thing that my mother got from an Ikea in Singapore. It’s pretty great, and my living room’s totally safe.”

“Ahh!” Michael’s head appeared from his office. “Karen!” He leapt forward and placed his hands on her shoulders, face entirely serious. “I want you to know, Karen, that I know that you and your mother must have had a very difficult time growing up with your father constantly overseas, but it is not okay to steal. Especially from Ikea.”

Dwight spun around in his chair. “Their meatballs are not 100% Swedish, and the cranberry sauce is canned. I asked.”

Karen slowly shrugged Michael’s hands off her shoulders. “We paid for the futon, Michael. We were on vacation in Singapore one winter to escape the cold.”

He nodded and looked down at his shoes. “I know that life in Chechnya must have been tough for a girl of your, uh, body type.”

From where Jim was sitting, he could see the expression on Karen’s face. He wished for a postcard.

“I was living in New Jersey, Michael.”

“Joisey?”

Dwight’s voice floated from his chair. “Newark’s population is 68% black. I took a population sample of five hundred.”

Karen turned to Pam, fists tightening around a crumpled piece of banana crème cardstock. “Do you need to crash somewhere?”

“Uh, sure! Yeah, absolutely. That’d be great.” Pam did her best to smile.

“Great.” Karen threw the cardstock into the recycling bin beside Stanley and genuinely smiled at Pam. “Parking lot after work?”

“That’d be great. Thanks so much.”

Pam returned to her desk and shook her head at the cameramen signaling the open conference room. She did not want a talking head asking her uncomfortable questions about Karen and the awkwardness that was sure to happen tonight. Besides, she’d heard stories about the camera crew at the CFO’s house entering little boys’ rooms, and hoped that they didn’t know where Karen lived.

~~~!~~~

Karen’s TV was probably twice the size of Pam’s, and Karen hadn’t turned on the Child Lock one weekend and forgotten how to turn it off. As such, Pam was enjoying South Park for the first time in five years.

“Oh my God, is Cartman praying to a poster of Braveheart?”

Karen quickly swallowed her mouthful of ice cream and laughed. “Yes!”

Pam tucked her legs back in under her and took another spoonful of Moose Tracks. “I never saw The Passion of the Christ. I feel like I missed out.”

Karen laughed again, this time around the Neapolitan in her mouth. “I saw it with Jim. He spent the entire movie just staring at the screen, like this.” Karen let her mouth fall open and slack and stared ahead of her with only slightly widened eyes. Pam laughed until her side ached and fell back onto the side of the futon, grabbing the bucket of mint chocolate chip for herself.

Stan made some comment about BASEketball and a Mind of Mencia commercial splayed across the high-def screen. Karen’s phone rang from its spot on the kitchen wall, and she leapt up to get it.

“Hello?” She pulled the strap of her cami up and glanced at Pam. “Oh, hi Mom. Yeah. Yup. Uh, give me a minute real quick?” She held the phone to her shoulder and made her way toward her bedroom. “Sorry, Pam, it’ll be like ten minutes. Tell me later if they find Mel Gibson.”

She shut the door. Pam could hear her talking through the walls. She glanced over at the digital clock sitting beside her, noting with a vague sense of puzzlement that it was already one in the morning. Get to sleep, Beesley. You’ve got work in the morning, not matter how fun this little slumber party is.

She stood up and moved the coffee table to the side, taking care not to let a tub of Ben and Jerry’s fall off. The futon was more complicated than it seemed, and she spent a while tugging and pulling and pushing before it unfolded into a flat bed with a quiet click. Not bad, Ikea.

Pam settled back onto the expanded surface, grabbed a few pillows from where Karen had stacked them on the other armchair, and settled down into the blanket she’d found. She was reaching over for the Vanilla Bean again when she noticed some blue striped fabric lying on the ground just under her bed. Her hand was halfway there when she realized it was a pair of men’s boxers.

Her hand shot back as if they had burned her. What was Karen doing with a pair of boxers in her house, trapped between the fold of her futon, no less?

Oh…

Karen’s grinning face appeared in her mind’s eye, shoveling strawberry ice cream into her mouth. “I saw The Passion of the Christ with Jim once.”

Pam couldn’t help it – she looked down at the boxers on the floor again, then blushed viciously and stared back at the GEICO commercial on the TV. So they’d gotten that far.

Good for him.

Pam tried hard not to think about the boxers, and even less about the man who surely owned them. But her mind shifted from illiterate cavemen to a certain coworker of hers, and before long she found herself staring at the boxers again, imagining that certain coworker wearing those boxers and nothing else.

Well, they’re nice boxers. Much nicer than Roy’s.

She shifted back into normalcy just as Karen’s voice filtered through the cheap apartment walls: “All right, Mom, bye now. I love you.”

Pam panicked and her arm shot out, shoving the boxers back under the futon as Karen appeared through the bedroom door. “Sorry, Pam!”

Oh my God. I just touched Jim Halpert’s underwear.

As she smiled at Karen and moved over for her, another thought lashed through her head:

So has she.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. I promise.  

~~~!~~~

“Angela, I just don’t understand why we have to have this Party Planning Meeting in Karen’s apartment.”

Angela’s face was a mask of desperation. “Michael’s plastic ruler holiday isn’t on my official calendar of holidays, but he dropped numerous hints throughout the day indicating that he was expecting a party. Therefore, as Party Planning Committee, we have to plan a party!”

Karen sighed and dropped another load of extra blankets and pillows onto the living room floor. “And you’re sure you all want to stay over?”

Angela whipped her plastic ruler onto the futon with a resounding snap. “Party planning takes time, people, time that we do not have. When we are finished do you really want to force us young women to drive home alone in the dark? Where is Pam?”

“I’m right here, Angela.” Pam appeared from where her head was buried in Karen’s freezer. “Where’s the ice cream?”

Kelly’s voice came from the bathroom loud and clear: “Ooo! Ice cream! We have ice cream!”

“Ice cream later, Kelly!”

“Omigodddd, Angela…”

Pam turned to Karen and they exchanged looks. “No South Park tonight, I guess.”

Karen laughed and retrieved a bag of carrot sticks from her fridge. “Carrot sticks and party planning. Cartman would be ashamed.”

Pam forced a laugh. “Ashamed, yeah, definitely.” She glanced over at the futon and tried hard not to think about what could be under it tonight.

~~~!~~~

Two hours later, after more than two people had been smacked by Angela’s ruler, Karen found a way to lock her into the bathroom.

“Help! Will somebody help me? I can’t get the door open, I can’t…Oh God. I’m stuck. Hail Mary, mother of God…”

Kelly clasped both hands over her mouth to stop the rebellious giggling as Karen leaned casually against the doorframe and lazily tapped at the doorknob.

“I can’t get it open, Angela…I should have told you that it locks itself sometimes…” she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I was locked in for an entire afternoon once. I picked the lock with my pocketknife.”

“Where is your pocketknife? Is it in here?”

“Top shelf.” Karen looked meaningfully at Kelly and Pam lying open-mouthed on the floor, pulling a small Swiss Army knife out of her pocket.

Pam got up off the floor and hurried over. “Angela? I called the locksmith. They’ll be here soon, they said.”

“Then we should expect them day after tomorrow,” Angela spat. “Call – call Dwight. He carries a skeleton key with him at all times.”

“Do you really want to wake him up? He’s got that MacAvoy sales call tomorrow, y’know – “

“Don’t wake him up!” Angela’s voice was reaching shrill new highs. “Don’t wake him up! Just…okay. There’s a man’s shaving kit in here. There’s got to be something I can use.”

Karen’s face turned red. “Um, Angela? That’s Jim’s. It’s for when he stays over, since he’s over here a lot anyway…uh…don’t use that, I think he’d be kind of mad if you took his razor apart.”

Pam swallowed hard and tried to smile. She could feel The Look creeping onto her face and turned from where Karen was talking Angela out of using a credit card and a bobby pin. Kelly saw The Look before Pam could hide it away, and clenched her hands around her mouth even tighter, nodding seriously for the first time Pam could remember.

~~~!~~~

“Pam, I’m telling you, do not eat that peanut butter. You do not know anything for sure. You could get salmonella.”

Pam waved her hand desperately at the peanut butter crackers in the vending machine. “They’re not Peter Pan, Dwight.”

“Are you one hundred percent certain? Have you ever visited a peanut butter factory? Do you realize how terrible the security is at a peanut butter factory? And yes, I have visited a peanut butter factory. Jiffy.”

“Is this payback for the whole Angela thing? Because I honestly had nothing to do with it.”

“No, this is not.” He tilted his head. “But in all honesty, I highly doubt your innocence. Fact: Receptionists know how to pick locks. Another fact: You did not pick any locks last night. Why not?”

“Okay, Dwight, you know what? No.” Pam’s hand whipped out and stabbed the numbers almost brutally.

“I’m warning you, Pam! I will be watching for the telltale symptoms of salmonella. Diarrhea, fever, vomiting, cramps, headache, fatigue – “

“No, Dwight!”

She bent down to retrieve her crackers, and when she stood up, Dwight was already gone. Salmonella, my ass. She leaned against the counter and opened the plastic wrapping. Maybe I should fake it, just for his sake. I should get Jim in on it too, we could – oh.  

The vicious blushing returned and she dropped a cracker. This has got to stop.

It had been about six hours since the shaving kit incident last night, and three weeks since she’d discovered the boxers. Three weeks was a long time to spend avoiding Jim’s eye and turning her head the other way when she saw Jockey ads. She had seen an Ikea billboard on the interstate the other day and nearly swerved into the railing. This morning, she had caught herself staring at his chin, noticing minor stubble on his jaw.

“This has got to stop,” she muttered, too absorbed in her thoughts to notice as Karen walked into the break room.

“What’s got to stop?” Karen asked, coming up to her and casually leaning against the vending machine.

“Oh! Karen!” Pam flustered again and shook her head. “Nothing. Dwight. Peanut butter, you know, salmonella…and apparently he visits Jiffy factories in his spare time.”

“Wouldn’t put it past him.” Karen fished around in her pocket for change and then looked back up at Pam. “Hey, you know what? I think I finally broke him down. I think Jim’s finally officially moving in with me.”

Pam dropped another cracker, and this time stayed down a long time searching for it.

“I just…wanted to tell you directly, instead of having you hear it from Kelly or something.” Pam tried hard not to picture the look on Karen’s face. “I know you guys had a thing a while back. But I think you’ve moved on, I mean, you seem fine to me, and he seems like he’s moved on too, and I just felt like…I don’t know. He mentioned it. Maybe he was kidding. I don’t know. It’s just that…yeah. Okay.”

Pam straightened up and did her best to smile. “That’s great. I’m really happy for you.”

Karen smiled and reached over to give Pam a hug. “Thanks, Pam.”

“No problem…” Pam bent her elbow and patted Karen on the back. Well, this was unexpected. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the black lens of the camera peeking through the blinds. Not as sneaky as you think you are. She had a prickling feeling on the back of her neck, and she knew that Dwight was following through with his promise to watch her for salmonella symptoms. Not nearly as sneaky as him.

Karen left the break room and Pam resumed her spot against the counter, peanut butter crackers forgotten. “I think you’ve moved on, I mean, you seem fine to me” – I’m not fine.  

I am not fine.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything but the plot, I swear.

~~~!~~~

Pam’s drunk, and she can’t remember why. She can’t remember what bar she was at, how many straight tequilas she ordered, what obscenities she sprayed at the bartender before he called her a cab, or what address she gave the nice man in the front of the car. She can’t remember where her car is, or why she’s not in it, or what time it was when she saw the cab through the neon lights in the window and started bawling.

There’s steps right now and she stumbles up them, leaning against the railing. Beesley, you’re a real mess right now, she hears, but there’s two steps to go and a friendly-looking doormat that looks so familiar.

She falls into the door and jams her thumb onto the doorbell, misses the first time and hits on her third try, feels a twinging pain in her hand and somehow wants it again. Pain would be nice. Anything but this. Laughs a bit and wonders what the voice is talking about, because you can’t just throw words like “pain” around without an explanation, dammit.

Door opens and light seems so sharp in her eyes, sharper than the TV screens at the bar and there’s a girl with friendly-confused eyes and nice hair, gray cami and panda PJs and Pam decides that she likes this girl a lot. Karen, the voice supplies, if only, if only. 

“Pam?” Karen says, and she can feel herself sort of stumbling inside and Karen’s hand is on her arm, taking an unzipped purse from her arm and closing the door behind her. “Pam, what did you drink…?”

Tequila, the voice supplies again, but she hears herself say “Nothing” in a little murmur like some kid, but Karen seems like she gets that “nothing” means “tequila” and then Pam turns and sees him –  

Eyes grow wide, and she can’t tell if it’s hers or his. She looks down at the corner where the futon meets the floor and swears to God that she can still see the boxers there, X-ray vision through the wall and swears to God that the shaving kit is still there, and now his smell is everywhere and his eyes are everywhere and she can’t get away this time.

“Tequila,” she hears herself say, and he lifts himself off the couch with a look on his face that says he gets all the rest of the words behind what she can say now, and the world spins around the axis of his eyes and she can feel his arms catching her just before she passes out –

 Tequila means you. 

~~~!~~~

A part of Karen wants to take pictures, and she knows that part needs to go away as fast as possible. Pam’s head is rolling on Jim’s shoulder and Karen finds herself at Pam’s feet, gently untying her Keds because that’s what you do when a girlfriend stumbles into your room, drunk to the gills.

“Is she all right?” she asks as Jim takes Pam’s body up in a fireman’s carry and gently lays her on the futon. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this drunk.”

“She doesn’t drink much.” Jim’s forehead is knotted and his face is clearly worried. Karen realizes with a vague, dawning fascination that this is a facial expression she hasn’t seen before. “At least, she never used to.”

Karen reaches down and gently unclips Pam’s hair, strokes it to where it’s comfortable and she can feel her conscience riling up – Why are you so nice to the girl who’s in your way? But she can’t help it, she just naturally befriended this girl and it’s only weeks after the first slumber party that she realizes they would’ve been the BFF type in middle school and how easily they could have been roommates in college.

Jim gently slides Pam’s hands off from where they’ve caught the fabric of his shirt and moves in to arrange her more comfortably on the sofa, and it’s something sweet and protective that Karen’s seen him do so many times to this girl that’s not her.

She stands up and goes to the kitchen, puts the wine glasses away and slides the candles back into her third drawer. Jim hears the sound of the drawer closing, because it’s the only drawer in her house with squeaky hinges – hears the sound and closes his eyes.

~~~!~~~

“Are you going to stay up with her?”

“I don’t know, I thought you wanted to.”

“We can’t just leave her alone.”

“Do we want to move her?”

“Probably not.”

“Right.”

“…”

“…”

“So are you going to stay up with her?”

“Let’s both.”

~~~!~~~

Pam wakes up with a huge headache and instantly winces. A hand is at her elbow almost immediately, and one more gently lifts her up to a sitting position. Something hot is at her lips and she can smell chocolate and whipped cream. “Drink.”

It’s warm and soothing in her throat and the headache is a little less now, enough for her to open her eyes and see the two heads peering at her, and she knows who they are now.

“Sorry, Karen,” she mumbles and ducks her head down for some more hot chocolate.

“No problem,” Karen says, and uses both hands to tuck her hair behind her ears. It’s then that Pam realizes that it’s Jim’s hands holding the hot chocolate up to her lips, Jim’s hands on her back.

She jumps a little, as if someone’s shocked her simply with static, and Jim brings the mug away before it can spill over. She can hear the sound of the mug being placed back onto the coffee table and remembers the tubs of Ben and Jerry’s, the vague reflections of cartoon characters on its smooth brown surface. His hand is gone from her back, and she’s cold again.

A pair of smaller hands brace the handle of the mug when it comes back up to her mouth, and the mug shakes more often and the whipped cream hits her nose a few times, but it’s better than nothing and maybe she needs it sometimes.

“You’re my friend, Karen,” she mutters. “I don’t care anyway, you’re my friend.”

The mug jolts and then steadies, and a soft warm thumb wipes the whipped cream from the tip of her nose. “Me too.”

~~~!~~~

It takes half an hour for Pam’s headache to go away, and she’s still a mess with her hair in a tangle and her clothes all rumpled. Karen points her at the bedroom with a change of clothes and helps her in, and when she comes back out, Jim is standing in the doorway, putting on his coat.

“Going somewhere?” she asks, walking right up to him, and she can see the lines of worry and confusion still on his face.

“Um, yeah, yeah,” he nods. “I’m not needed here, and it’s kind of a touchy thing anyway. I’ll just, uh, go home, I mean Mark’s there tonight, and there’s a UConn game on.”

“Jim.” Karen reaches up and gently touches her fingers to his cheek, nudges his chin so that his eyes meet hers. “I want to say something to you, and you better be listening to me when I say it because you need to hear it.”

Jim nods, and Karen forces herself not to look down. “I get what I came in the middle of, Jim, I get it. I understand. Completely. I didn’t understand before, mainly because you didn’t tell me, but I think I get it all now, and I get what’s going on. Honestly, Jim, I feel like I love you, but I get that you just can’t.” Her voice almost breaks on this last word, but she catches herself just in time.

“I can’t hate you, and it’s going to sound weird, but she’s somehow my best friend and I can’t hate her either. Now, Jim – “ he turns his head away and she catches his chin again, buries the feeling in her chest and continues – “Jan sent out an email for the women in the company. She’s looking for a new female head of company-wide HR. It’s purely corporate, a leg up from my job now, and the pay’s great, and I’ll be in charge of Toby and all that, so…I asked her for it. I was going to tell you tonight.”

His voice is hoarse and she tries hard to keep her fingers from shaking as he speaks. “You don’t have to move to New York City because of me.”

“Because of you and her.” She shakes her head a little and does the wry smile she’s learned from him after months of butterfly kisses and jokes. “And I already moved to Scranton for you, New York City’s going to be an upgrade.”

He tries to speak again, but she cuts him off because she knows if he started saying something, she’d break. “I know – at least, I think I know – that it’s not just me. There’s something here that nobody could break. I got in the middle of it, and I know now that I never stood a chance. Listen now, Jim, because this is the really important part.” She swallows and lets herself say what she’s needed to say since she closed her squeaky candle drawer. “What you’ve got with her is something greater than what almost everyone else is ever going to have. I don’t want to be the one to keep either of you from it, because it’s something very few people get.”

She can’t read the expression on his face, but she keeps talking because if she stopped now, she’d never finish. “You two deserve it. I want you two to have it. And there’ll be other guys for me, I mean, probably nobody like you, Jim, but I’ll find someone. The thing is, you don’t know it, but you two already have.”

Karen leans up on her toes and gives Jim a kiss on the cheek, and it feels so odd to her, like somebody’s ripping half her heart to shreds and sewing the other half at the same time. Then she turns from him and walks back to where Pam is calling for help in the bathroom, and the ripping stops and the sewing begins in earnest.

~~~!~~~

The next morning, Jim Halpert sits on the futon next to Pam Beesley and wonders how and why. Karen is still asleep in the bedroom where she and Pam talked all night. He can’t think about Karen now. He can’t think about much at all.

“She’s moving to New York,” he says, and feels her chest heave beside him.

“She told me last night.” Something raw and open is in her tone. “For us.”

“Any other way but this way,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want to hurt her, ever.”

She’s quiet for a long time. “Me neither.”

They can’t say anything for a long while. The apartment’s quiet with the sound of Karen’s steady, gentle breathing.

Then he turns. “What happens now?” And his gaze is frank and honest and so real. 

She opens her mouth to say something intelligent, but “I love you” spills out instead and for once she’s glad that it happened that way. Despite this thing between them and the girl sleeping in the next room, Pam feels like it happened right, and the feeling of his hand intertwined with hers is so perfect, so perfect.

~~~!~~~

Disclaimer: Don't own a thing.  

~~~!~~~ 

One in the morning, and Pam’s phone is ringing. She opens her eyes just barely and snuggles back into where she’s spooned against Jim’s chest. “Phone?”

The movement has Jim awake, but he buries his face into her curls and grunts. Pam giggles sleepily and reaches out to grab the phone lying on her nightstand, holds it to her ear and answers, “Hello?”

“Pam?” Pam is awake. She sits up and shakes Jim out of his sleep, turns on the light beside her. It’s a bad connection, and it’s two in the morning, but it’s Karen.

“Karen? Something wrong?”

“No!” Karen sounds like it’s Christmas. Jim looks at Pam with interest. “Pam! I’m sorry, I didn’t know who to call, I didn’t want to call my mom, but I needed to call somebody, and I don’t know – “

“What’s happening?”

“Pam, there’s this guy,” Pam smiles and Jim looks more and more confused. “He’s a musician, he’s so cute, he’s got that whole sensitive Iron & Wine thing going on but he knows Brandon Flowers and kind of looks like a cross between Jensen Ackles and Piz on Veronica Mars – “

Pam whistles and jerks backward to avoid Jim’s tickling fingers. “So?”

“So I met him at Virgin Records when I was looking for the Death Cab CD and then at this party that a mutual friend holds and he asked me out and we went out last night and he’s so sweet, he kissed me at my apartment door and promised to call and then – and then – Pam, he called back! Today! And took me to dinner with the Strokes!”

“Not bad,” Pam manages as she fends off Jim’s advancing fingers.

“And we just got back from the second date and he kissed me again at my apartment door and Pam, he’s a damn good kisser.”

Pam laughs again and finally smacks Jim’s hand away. “That’s so terrific! Do you have a picture of him or something like that, something so that I can see this guy? What’s his name?”

“I’ll get one soon.” Karen giggles again, and she sounds like a less shrill version of Kelly. “His name is Riley. It’s fantastic. The next time you guys come up here I want you to meet him.”

“Awesome,” Pam says. “I’m really happy for you, Karen, I mean you’ve been looking around for, oh my god, it’s been a year.”

“Yeah,” Karen says, and her voice loses a bit of its manic happiness. “But I think he’s a really good guy. I really like him, and my friend says he’s a fantastic guy and has totally had his eye on me for like six months. He’s great. Speaking of which, how’s the ring? You like it?”

“What?” Pam’s eyes grow to the size of Hummer tires and she looks at Jim. “Ring?”

Jim’s face pales. In New York City, Karen’s face turns almost the exact same color. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I’m sorry. Jim? Tell Jim I’m sorry.”

“Ring?” Pam repeats, the word sounding like Greek on her tongue. “Ring?”

Jim quietly takes the phone from Pam’s hand. “Karen? Um, can we call you back?”

“I’m so sorry Jim! I’m so sorry!”

“That’s okay. Um, we’ll call you back tomorrow, or today, or…we’ll call you back, okay?” Jim hangs up and softly puts the phone back onto the nightstand. Pam’s eyes are still on him, her chest rising and falling in her little pink cami.

“Um…” Jim reaches over and pulls a little box out of his nightstand. “I asked her to help me pick it out, ‘cause I didn’t know what to get, and she told me to get this thing…”

He gets up and walks around to her side of the bed, kneels there and Pam swears that she’s having a heart attack or something, or maybe she’s just dreaming. “This is so bad,” he mutters. “Pam, will you – “

“Yes!” She screams and jumps off the bed, tackling him. “Yes! Yes yes yes yes!”

Jim decides soon that maybe, in spite of the sand still in the corners of his eyes, the vague morning breath he knows he already has and the aching in his back, this way isn’t so bad after all.

~~~!~~~

The next morning, Jim’s got teabags under his eyes and forgot to comb his hair in the morning, but he sits at his desk and pushes calls through and chuckles when Pam walks by, gently dragging a finger over the curve of his shoulder. He’s so tired that he doesn’t notice Dwight’s eyes until it’s too late.

Dwight leans over and stares at Jim. “Fact: You look exhausted. Another fact: the box you carried in your pocket for all of yesterday is no longer there. Final fact: The finger Pam just flirted with is attached to a hand which contains another finger with a ring.”

Phyllis looks over at Pam, who is trying to stifle a very large grin as she fills a cup at the water cooler. “Are you engaged?”

Jim leans back in his chair and folds his arms, smiling at his new fiancé. “Yes, we are.”

Michael bursts out of his office with a roar. “Engaged?!!!”

Angela smiles at Pam, then goes back to glowering at Jim before anyone can notice. Kevin snickers and nods. “Oh, yes.” Kelly gasps and turns to Ryan, who is wearing a look of abject horror.

Dwight simply smiles smugly and leans back. “I knew it.”

Michael jazz-hands his way over to Jim. “JimalamaPama! Who woulda thunk it? Jim, you are now the first man in this office to make an honest woman out of…a woman.”

Stanley clears his throat. “Michael, I am married. Toby just got married again.”

“Well, I know how it is, brutha,” Michael’s head bobs side to side. “A brutha’s gotta do what a brutha’s gotta do. I know lots of black guys on the down-low. And Toby…Toby doesn’t count.”

Stanley crushes an empty water bottle in his fist. Phyllis reaches over to pat his hand.

Michael’s attention transfers back to Pam, who has made her way over to stand by Jim. “So, uh…when’s the wedding, guys? Pam, how’s your father? Do you need a wheelchair service perhaps?”

“My father plays tennis every other day, Michael.”

“Then does he need a…what’s it called, the guy who carries the rackets around…does he need a caddie? I can definitely do that.”

“That’s golf, Michael.”

Dwight takes a purple belt out of his desk drawer. “Your security will be excellent, I promise.”

“Flowers!” squeals Kelly.

“Alcohol,” whispers Meredith.

Jim turns and mutters to Pam, “Are you sure you don’t want to just elope or something? I know an excellent motel in Las Vegas.”

Pam laughs and strokes his hair. “It wouldn’t be nearly as fun as this could be.”

Jim nods and bites his lower lip, then looks back up and smiles and Pam swears that she can feel her kneecaps melting. “I don’t mind, as long as I get to marry you.”

~~~!~~~