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.