"Best date ever?" He whispered into her hair.

"Best date ever," she agreed, snuggling closer to him. She slid deeper into their two-person sleeping bag that they'd laid out in the living room in front of the fireplace. 

--------

To celebrate the fact that they'd bought a house together that included a real fireplace in the living room, Jim and Pam had decided to have a little camp-out on the living room carpet. Jim had wanted to make it as much like a "real" camping experience as possible. They'd moved all the furniture to one end of the room, leaving them a large expanse of carpet where they could set up the little two-person tent a safe distance from the fire, spread out the large, two-person sleeping bag in front of the fireplace, and stocked up on camping junk food-- chips, marshmallows, popcorn, hot dogs, cookies.

They'd built the fire together with Pam creating kindling out of some newspaper which she rolled up and tied into loose knots, and sticks that they'd gathered from the back yard (their own back yard!) earlier in the day. Jim arranged it underneath the larger split logs in the fireplace before lighting it and tending to it until it got going on its own.

They had turned all the lights out in the living room, feeling like they really were camping out in the woods at night with only the light of the fire to see by.

As they had sat indian-style in front of the fire, roasting their hot dogs on wooden sticks that they'd pilfered from the fondue kit they'd gotten as a wedding gift, Jim declared, "I think we should do this for real this summer."

"What, camping?"

"Yeah," he said, stretching a leg out in front of him.

 "I've never been camping..."

"You've never been camping?" he asked incredulously.

"Nope."

"Not even with Roy? He seemed like the camping type." Roy wasn't really a sore subject between them anymore. Just a part of her past, finally.

"No, we used to go to the cabin on the lake, but we never did the whole sleeping-outside-in-tents thing."

"Wow. We are definitely going camping this summer. It's actually a lot like this, but, you know, outside."

Pam giggled and realized her hot dog was done. She pulled it out of the fire and placed it on a roll, fishing the mustard out of the cooler and drawing a line of it along the hot dog. Jim did the same a few moments later, as he saw the outside of his hot dog getting a little charred.

"Oh my god, best hot dog ever!" Pam exclaimed after taking a bite.

Jim laughed. "See? Everything's better when you're camping."

"Oh really? We'll just have to test that theory a little later."

Jim raised an eyebrow and imitated Kevin. "Niiiice."

Pam playfully slapped him on the arm. "Shut up!"

------

After filling up on hot dogs and junk food, and replacing a few logs on the fire, Pam began to get sleepy and leaned against Jim's shoulder, yawning.

"Wait, no going to sleep yet. We have to roast marshmallows," he said, producing a bag of large marshmallows and the skewers they'd used earlier to roast their hot dogs on. He pushed a marshmallow onto each stick, and handed one off to Pam. She carefully thrust it into the fireplace, in a space underneath the logs where the embers glowed orange.

Jim, however put his right into the flames, watching it catch on fire right away. He removed it from the fire, and blew out the flame. It was charred black and Pam made a face.

"What, you don't approve of my marshmallow-roasting methods?" he asked, eating the marshmallow in one bite.

"No! They taste gross when they get all black on the outside."

"How would you know? I thought you've never been camping before?" he mumbled with his mouth full of gooey marshmallow.

"Yeah, but my friends used to have bonfires and stuff when I was a kid, and we'd roast marshmallows over the fire. I mastered the skill of getting it lightly brown and crunchy on the outside, and nice and melty on the inside."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, look." Pam took her marshmallow out of the fire. It had puffed up to twice it's normal size, and was lightly brown on the outside. "And the fun part is  eating off the really melted layer, and then roasting the inside part that hasn't melted all the way through."

Jim watched her demonstrate. "Wow, that's a lot of work. Too much work for me."

Pam rolled her eyes. "Shut up."

"Jeez, second time tonight!" He said, smiling, and roasted his second marshmallow the same way as he did his first one. As he bit into it this time, some of the melted marshmallow dripped down his chin. He was about to wipe it off when he saw the sudden mischievous look in Pam's eyes.

"Here, let me get that," she said softly, leaning over and kissing his chin. She left her lips there, and nibbled at the sticky marshmallow until his chin was clean. She placed a tiny trail of kisses up to where she sucked on his marshmallow-flavored bottom lip, and he inhaled a gasp. He brought his hands to her face and kissed her thoroughly, leaning into her until he was lying on top of her on their sleeping bag.

They never actually made it inside of their tent that night.