So this is a bit late to the Business School party... but I've given up on making it a one-shot (it'll be no longer than 3 parts, if that). As such, the rating may go up to M, but it would be very, very mild. Unless I'm feeling saucy. So let's assume that the rating will stay at T. Please enjoy, and thank you for reading. Next chapter up shortly.

Disclaimer: The Office? Yeah, doesn't belong to me. Although I did just play Pam in an Office-themed showcase that I wrote... but I don't own the Office, or much of anything. Please, do not sue. Thanks much, bye. Molly.

Edited because my chapter notes are not showing up for me... how rude. Anyway. On with the show.

*

Pam sat in her art class, only a few days after her failed show. She was unable to focus, mind jumping from thoughts of Jim to her dead-end relationship with Roy to Oscar and Gil's comments about her art... by the time she snapped back to reality, her class was over and most of the other students had gone. Blushing, she looked over to her teacher and smiled sheepishly as she began to gather her things. Mr. Mooney was an older man, long salt and pepper hair, wild beard - his hands were always stained with one substance or another, dried clay or paint, calloused and rough from his years as an artist. He was mildly eccentric but rather soft-spoken, so Pam couldn't hide her surprise when he addressed her.

"I can't see what you're so afraid of, Pam," he mused, almost to himself. "You have enormous potential, so much to give - why won't you let go and let yourself be inspired, free?"

Before the show, she could see herself regressing, almost as if she was watching her life from the outside, not participating in the events unfolding. She felt less and less like ‘Fancy New Beesley' each day following Phyllis' wedding, after leaving with Roy and falling back into the same old pattern. What hurt more than the realization that she was a coward was how quickly Jim came to disregard everything... Pam. The few times she caught him looking, the disappointment etched into his features was more than she could bear.

"Pam?" Mr. Mooney's low timber was soothing, pulling her out of her thoughts, softly demanding, "What's holding you back?"

She smiled, sad, for once in her life knowing exactly how to answer that question. "It's been said that I lack courage and honesty." A pause, and the smile left her face. Everything about her softened as she admitted, "I guess you could call it unrequited love."

The man opposite her had no reply, save a look of intense thought and something almost akin to understanding. She took his silence as her cue to leave and was already to the door of the classroom when his voice stopped her.

"I think you're a true artist, Pam." She turned, and he was fumbling around at his desk. "When things get tough, the true artist knows where to look to get through it."

Giving her a meaningful look, he handed her something that looked vaguely familiar, and when it hit her hands, she realized that it was her first sketchbook for his class. It was his turn to walk to the door, but before he left he offered, "I marked the pages that I thought were... inspired. Goodnight, Pam."

She sat down at one of the tables, suddenly intrigued to know what of her work could have possibly inspired him. She opened to the first page he'd tabbed, and the image there popped out at her. Hands.

More specifically, Jim's hands.

Long, slender fingers rendered in charcoal, each line in his palm drawn with painstaking detail. She remembered when she had drawn this, after the fight between Dwight and Michael at the dojo, after she had studied his palm as if it were the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

She couldn't look at the drawing of his hands without remembering how tightly they'd held her when he kissed her, and it was distracting her from the task at hand. She forced herself to turn to the next page Mr. Mooney had marked, and what she saw made her gasp.

Again, it was Jim. This time, his face. He was smiling, giving her the smile that she knew was reserved for only her. She stared down at the image, and it made her heart ache for the days when that smile was a regular occurrence.

Pam continued to flip through the tabbed pages, astounded when she realized that every single marked picture had something to do with Jim. She felt her breath catch in her throat when she came upon the simple yet almost photographic pencil sketch of Jim's face that night on the deck of the Booze Cruise. The oil painting of Dwight's stapler in Jell-O made her laugh aloud, and with the laugh her tears began to fall. Jim's smile, his eyes, another sketch of his hands; all in different mediums, each more expressive than the one before... there were some images that she didn't even remember creating. Her teapot in oil pastels was one such drawing... it was clear to her that her subconscious had been telling her the obvious truth all along, but the rest of her was too damn stubborn to see it.

She physically started when she came to the last marked page. It was Jim, again, but unlike the rest of her drawings, he wasn't smiling or carefree. It was Casino Night, inside the office where he'd kissed her so passionately. There wasn't the precise detail in this image that there was in the rest of the book, but there was an element that had escaped all of the other drawings.

Pam herself was in this image.

To someone who didn't know, it was just charcoal, a smudged and blurred rendering of two nondescript bodies embracing passionately against a desk in an office. But she knew better.

The images leaped off of the page, and she could see Jim's taller, broader form hovering above her own. She could see her own, so scared and apprehensive looking up at him. She could see his desk, the desk she migrated to every day back then. In the background, she saw her own desk and the small geometric smudge that she knew was her jellybean dish.

She snapped the sketchbook closed, unable to look at the images any longer. Suddenly, she knew what Mr. Mooney had been trying to tell her, what she had known herself all along.

Jim Halpert was her inspiration, not only in her artistic world, but in every other aspect of her life as well.

Over the next week, Pam kept her distance, rarely straying from reception. But at her perch, she watched him, taking in every expression on his face, every movement of his long, graceful body. She had immediately purchased a new sketchbook after flipping through her old one, and both of them traveled with her wherever she went: they went to the conference room, hidden inside a manila folder; they sat on her nightstand when she went to sleep at night; they even came along with her to the grocery store, because she never knew when the inspiration would strike her, and the urge to channel the flash of line and shape onto paper was irrepressible.

Thoughts of him filled her head constantly, and she had realized that Jim Halpert had become her unsuspecting muse. He always had been.

By her next art class, the brand new book was nearly full. It had been an awakening, looking through the old sketchbook; never had she drawn more inspiration from the world around her. Her class was uneventful, and she left quietly, forgoing words for a telling smile at Mr. Mooney. He returned it with a nod, his eyes sparkling, knowing that she had finally let go and let the world in.

Pam was apprehensive, but she knew that nothing could stop her now. Instead of taking the usual left to drive home, she steeled herself and turned right. It occurred to her that she hadn't thought ahead, that maybe he wouldn't want to see her, or maybe he wasn't even home, or, oh, God, maybe he was home but he wasn't alone. That another woman was already there.

But she knew that this was something she needed to do.

Pam pulled into his driveway, thankful that only his car was present and the lights were on inside. A deep breath propelled her out of her car and toward his front door. Her knock was firm, more confident than she felt, but as she heard him yell out, "Just a minute!" she realized that she wasn't afraid.

For the first time in her life, she wasn't afraid.

So... worth finishing? Anything you'd like to see? Anything you truly hated or thought was laughable? Let me know! Thank you for reading!