I

They left Dwight asleep on the couch next to reception after tiptoeing around him and suppressing giggles to keep from waking him up. They burst into loud laughter the second the elevator doors close and then find their way out of the building and into the night air and it all just feels so intimate. They’ve spent the entire night together, and she blew Roy off to do it. And she liked that he made her dinner and it just feels like they’re in this bubble that will burst if either one of them actually makes the move to leave.

He’s trying to postpone it by talking about how they’ll see each other in 10 hours and making jokes about what they’ll do during their limited time apart while he’s putting in his earphones so that he can listen to Travis loud enough to drown out the end of the best night he’s had in a long time. He’s wondering if it’s at all possible that she doesn’t want it to end, either, when she breaks into his weird monologue about finding himself to ask if he has new music on his iPod.

“Yeah,” he says, surprised, and then she’s holding her hand out to him for one of his headphones and his heart lurches in his chest because she doesn’t want the night to end.

She puts the ear bud in her ear, tilting her head towards his when she does it because now they can only stand as far apart as his Apple produced headphones will allow. And he feels drunk, intoxicated simply by her nearness. Her hand keeps brushing up against his as they sway to what he is realizing is a haunting, sexual song, and it would be just so fucking easy to wrap his fingers around hers; he even thinks if he could do it while keeping his expression impassive enough, he could probably get away with it and call sleep deprivation if she ever brings it up. And now and then he can feel her move almost imperceptibly closer and he should just do it, just grab her hand. And hell, forget her hand, he should just kiss her.

The music is swelling and she's so deliciously close and do it, Halpert, you've been waiting for this moment all night, or maybe for the entire last 3 years, or maybe your entire life, just do it, this is the perfect moment.

He doesn't know how long they stand there, gently swaying to his music, never standing further apart than his iPod headphones will allow. But he doesn't go for it.

Not yet.

II

Once the camera crew leaves his bedroom to investigate what the rest of the party goers are up to (something Jim almost can’t believe has actually happened since they always seem to be looming whenever he and Pam have a moment otherwise alone), the air in the room starts feeling a lot more…dense. When he’s ever though about Pam alone in his room, his thoughts have been about totally G-rated things like waking her up after one of Michael’s meetings by kissing her on the forehead, or really cooking her dinner in his kitchen while she sits at the table and doodles on a notepad, or times he might have just reached out to hold her hand and the surprised, pleased smile she might give him if he did it in just the right, nonchalant way. Something about the fact of actually being in love with this girl has precluded him from ever fantasizing about having her in his bed, but here she is sitting on it and he honestly feels like he might pass out from the weight of it all.

He thinks how he could shut the door very quietly—he knows this because Mark is a super light sleeper and so Jim has perfected the art of silently getting up to pee in the middle of the night—and go sit next to her and put his hand to her cheek and lean in. In this moment he has an inexplicable sense of certainty that she would close the distance between them if he did that, that she would let it happen. And then for the first time images start rushing through his mind: them stretching out over his quilt and him climbing on top of her and pressing his hips into hers and her brushing his hair out of his eyes and them removing each others clothes and trying to be quiet so nobody will hear them. And it’s so weird, but it’s so clear to him. It’s like he’s not just imagining all of this but is watching it all happen right in front of him.

His heart is starting to beat faster and his eyes are blurring, and then—

There’s the sound of a thud downstairs, and something shattering, and she looks up from his yearbook as he slides his eyes from where they’ve been trained on the expanse of his bed to meet hers and they both raise their eyebrows and then jump up and run down the stairs to see what happened.

People start leaving not long after that and after cleaning up in a total daze, he turns and walks back upstairs. He stretches out on his bed, hands behind his head, trying to see it all again as clearly as before, but it’s gone again, back to hand holding and missed moments.

He replays the night over and over and eventually he falls into a restless sleep, still fully clothed, on top of his empty, still made bed.

III

The Christmas party goes on after Pam shows him the teapot and everybody besides the two of them is pretty drunk. They’re both standing on her side of reception and leaning against the wall, observing the scene, and Pam sighs.

“I want to catch up,” she says, nodding to indicate their intoxicated coworkers, “but I just really don’t like vodka.”

“That’s because you’ve never had one of my famous electric screwdrivers,” Jim replies easily, and she turns to look at him in surprise.

“One of your what?”

He grins down at her. “You’ve never heard of those?” She shakes her head in amazement, and he continues, “Ok, we’re going to need some supplies.” He ticks them off on his long fingers. “I’ll get the orange soda, juice, and vodka, you look for more cups, Ryan says we’re out which probably means he hid them somewhere.” She nods in a very official way and they set off in search of their items.

He ‘s walking from the break room through the kitchen to meet her back at her desk when he spots her in the tiny supply closet next to the bathrooms. He leans against the doorjamb and just watches her for a moment, standing on her tiptoes and trying to reach the top shelf, before clearing his throat to let her know he’s there. “Need some help?” He asks as she turns to smile up at him.

“Yeah, get in here with those long legs,” she replies, and then blushes fiercely, which pleases him enormously.

He steps into the tiny room and looks around for a second to figure out what to do with the beverages he’s juggling. The shelves are all too full (it’s such a tiny closet) and so he bends down to place them on the floor.

It’s when he starts to stand back up that he realizes how close they’re standing, and in that moment someone walks by and bumps the door a little so it swings to almost all the way shut. He raises himself up to his full height slowly, keeping his eyes on hers in the dark as he does. It’s so cramped in here, he can feel the heat radiating from every part of her body up against his, and it suddenly seems so obvious how easy it would be to lean down to kiss her. He can hear her somewhat shallow breathing and it starts to almost feel like he would be stupid not to kiss her. He can smell her shampoo and feel her sway a little on her feet, and he leans the tiniest bit closer to her and then someone else bumps the door.

…And the moment is just over. The noises of the party on the other side of the door come rushing back in and Pam looks down at her feet and then back up at him and oh, it’s awkward, it’s so awkward.

“Um,” she says desperately.

He takes the opportunity to save her, to save them both. “Where are those cups?” He asks, but he can’t stop staring into her eyes and his voice is thick with desire. He clears his throat again and she furrows her brows with concern.

“Oh, are you coming down with something?” He looks at her for a long moment, blinks, then catches on.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, looking down at the beverages on the floor. He lifts a hand from where it hangs next to hers—purposely brushes his fingers against hers while doing so because he just can’t not do anything—and rubs the back of his neck. He sniffs, then says more loudly, “Maybe. I should probably head home soon, just in case.” He’s suddenly struck by how tired he is. Maybe he actually is getting sick. He gets the cups, and they emerge from the closet.

He ends up staying to make her a drink and is pleased when she likes it, but something has shifted between them that just won’t go back to normal. The party fizzles and everyone agrees to move it to Poor Richards, but he bails after a little snowball fight in the parking lot and tells everyone he’s going home.

She kisses him on the cheek before he gets into his car, but it’s not the same.

IV

He knows it’s weird and maybe even a little demented, and he can't remember exactly when or how it started, but for a while now he's measured the world by how many physical steps there are between him and him kissing her. And he's thinking this, and about how the distance is exactly zero steps and how they are also completely alone, and he’s wondering if maybe he’s been looking at the world this way his whole life and that it just started to make sense three years ago when he finally met the girl he was taking these steps toward, when she says something about not understanding her fiancé.

And then she makes the completely un-Pam-like choice of teasing him in a completely coy, flirtatious way.

If he were the male lead a movie and this happened, the next obvious script note would tell him to kiss her.

He stares down at her. The beers he’s drunk tonight are swirling in his stomach and making the world seem fuzzy, and he searches her eyes to see if she would be ok with it. If she would be ok with him closing the distance between his lips and hers. He knows Roy and Katy are maybe only thirty yards away, despite the door separating them, and he knows there’s no way they’d escape the boat without having to see them when they disembark, if not sooner, but he doesn’t care.

She’s still smiling widely at him and his gaze on her intensifies, and he’s thinking, Do you know what you’re doing right now? So loud that she has to hear him. And he thinks she does because her smile suddenly fades and she shifts her gaze and shakes her head.

“I’m cold,” she says, giving him a clearly forced smile, and then she pushes herself up from the rail and walks back inside. And every step she takes is another step away from him and him kissing her.

He leans against the railing of the ship and stares out at the water, and wonders if she’ll ever let him be that close again.

He needs another beer.

V

They hang back after the gift giving in the skating rink’s private party room to clean up and they end up getting distracted and goofing around. They start joke-fighting about who gets to take home the jersey Dwight got for Michael which wound up under a pile of balled up wrapping paper. “I’m about to get really good at skating, Pam, and I’m going to need a jersey to wear while I’m waiting to be signed to a team,” Jim says with mock seriousness.

She laughs and protests, “Well, while you’re getting really good at skating? I’m going to need a new nightgown!”

“You don’t wear nightgowns,” Jim scoffs, picturing the flowery flannel things his mom wore when he was a kid and not really thinking about what he’s talking about and gives the jersey an extra hard yank and apparently it catches Pam off guard because she ends up stumbling forward and he catches her in his arms.

They’ve been acting like a couple all day: shopping together, holding hands on the skating rink, presenting gifts “from everyone,” and when he catches her she instinctively wraps her arms around him and they’re just standing there and laughing in each other’s arms like it’s the most natural thing ever. She turns her face up to look at him with bright eyes as their laughter dies down.

“You can have the jersey,” he says, still smiling. “Just so long as you promise to think of me when you wear it.”

“Every time,” she says, and then they’re just holding each other and this has to be it, this has to be the moment.

“Promise?” he whispers. His smile is gone and hers is fading.

“I promise,” she says back softly, and he starts to lean a little closer to her, but something flashes in her eyes and it makes him stop short. Is it fear? Desire? He can’t quite tell but suddenly it’s not the right moment after all.

“Good,” he says a little loudly as he straightens up and lets her go. “Hey, do you need a ride back to the office?” He asks as he turns back to the table, picking up the last few paper cups.

“Oh, actually, I drove here myself,” she says, “So.”

“Oh, right,” he chuckles. “Ok, well, I guess I’ll get going, then.”

“Yeah. Hey, thanks for—“ she starts, and then stops short for some reason. He turns to look back at her as he’s slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder, raises his eyebrows. Waits.

She tries to formulate a sentence for a minute, and then shrugs. “Thanks for today,” she finally says, giving him a nervous smile. “It was really…good.”

He nods, allows her a quick grin. “Any time, Beesley.” They’re on opposite sides of the table, now, so he holds up his hand for an air-five, which she returns. “See you tomorrow?” He asks.

“Yup!” She smiles brightly, and he turns and walks out to his car, calling, “Enjoy the jersey!” Over his shoulder, and his smile is no longer forced.

Kevin is going to be ok. He got Pam to do something incredibly silly in public. He actually sort of likes ice-skating, and she got a little better at it during the afternoon and it was because of him. He got to feel what it’s like to hold her in his arms. She’ll think of him before she falls asleep if she ever wears that jersey to bed.

It was a good day.

I

For some reason, the fact of him being unable to speak during their game of jinx has resulted in what feels like the two of them playing some weird kind of emotional chicken. They each keep seeming to take these bizarre steps toward admitting something he’s never come close to actually saying out loud (unless you count his talk with Michael that one stupid time), and that up until now, he wasn’t totally sure she felt in the same way. But something about them both knowing that he won't reply to anything she says makes them both somehow immeasurably more daring and they both keep taking these weird risks that he doesn't really have time to analyze but it sort of feels like a suicide mission.

There's this delirious part of his brain that keeps telling him that maybe if he kisses her while jinxed and unable to explain himself, he can play it off later as not really meaning anything.

And then she starts pushing him to say something to her, to tell her something he’s hiding, and it’s honestly fine and amusing and cute until she says, “You can tell me anything,” and he thinks, Oh, you want to play this game?

He lets the smile fade from his lips as he continues to hold her gaze. At first she gives a silent giggle, scrunching her shoulders together adorably, and then her face becomes more serious and he chooses that moment to look away and raise his eyebrows slightly. We both know I can’t tell you anything. He sneaks a glance at her and he can tell she knows exactly what he’s getting at, and it scares her away.

*

What it scares her into, it turns out, is going out on her lunch break to get a Coca Cola so that he can buy it and then give it back to her and they can go back to talking. And it’s probably silly but it feels to him, as they go into the break room to share her soda, like she’s answering his challenge from earlier, like he scared her into action.

He’s sure of it, actually.

*

He's not usually sure either way, but he’s positive as they walk back through the kitchen to return to their desks that the cameras won't catch them. He can see that half of the production crew is in the conference room interviewing Angela about drug use, and the other half is in Michael's office while he tries to explain the virtues of borrowing (borrowing?!) someone else's urine during company mandated drug testing. He surreptitiously turns his mic off as they walk through the kitchen, and when she hears the clicking sound it makes and looks over at him, he gestures for her to do the same.

She raises her eyebrows at him. Why are we doing this? But he shakes his head and so reaches to turn hers off, squinting her eyes slightly as she smiles at him, and he nods toward the door. She follows him out to the hallway, where he quickly pulls her into the seldom-used handicapped bathroom.

"Jim, what--" she starts, laughter in her voice, but stops and raises her eyebrows when he locks the door. They only have a few minutes before somebody in the control room notices that their mics aren't picking anything up, so if he's going to do this, he's going to have to act fast.

"Did you bring me here to murder me?" She asks, still amused, and he thinks, God, I’m in love with her. He pushes himself forward, away from the door, wrapping one arm around her waist and plunging his other hand into the hair at the nape of her neck, and he's finally, finally kissing her. She gasps against his lips and he pulls away.

"Thanks for getting the Coke," he breaths.

"Don’t mention it," she says, shaking her head quickly, and then they're really kissing, turning in slow circles with their efforts to each touch as much of the other as possible. She's got one hand on his chest and one wrapped under and around his arm to grip his shoulder, and her fingers slowly drift down to his waist to wrap around his belt and he chokes for a second and then pushes her up against the wall, away from him just for a second so he can look at her. His eyes devour her flushed cheeks and dark eyes and heaving chest before he pushes the length of his body up against hers and kisses her still more deeply. He’s thinking, Wow, this is going way better than I ever honestly thought it would, and their frantic hands are starting to wander under the hems of shirts in search of warm, bare skin, and then they hear Dwight yell "JIM!"

They jump back like magnets repelling each other.

"Sorry," he mutters, looking down at the floor, like he can claim that this was an accident. He can see her smoothing her hair out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't be," she says, and when he finally looks back at her, it strikes him that she is smiling with more ease than he's seen in her in a long time.

“I glued his stapler to his desk,” he says by way of explanation, holding his hands up helplessly, and she lets out a laugh and she just looks so beautiful. He takes a tentative step towards her at the same time as she reaches for him and he kisses her again, quickly but soundly, and then rests his forehead against hers.

"Sometimes I really wish I was single,” she murmurs.

And it’s like he’s been floating all this time and her words send him plummeting back to earth. He actually staggers on his feet.

“Me, too,” he finally says quietly.

She flashes him a regretful smile and then she's out the door, leaving him alone to wonder what possibly happens next.