Disclaimer: Not mine. NBC. Yes.

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After Jim walks away, the first thing Pam does is twist her engagement ring.

Soon there will be another ring, and then she's linked, then she's married, then she's taken.

She wants that. She's always wanted that, since ninth grade, with her braces and glasses and her poster of Jared Leto among the still lifes, and random paint splatters that make her dad groan and her mother laugh. She wants the 2.5 kids and the picket fence and the dog and the little room to draw and paint. The flowers. The PTA meetings. She has it planned, right down to tri-annual trips to Disney World. She would make the kids wear orange, and hold the baby against her chest while Roy took the older two on Space Mountain, and she'd pace and worry, and then they would come back with shining eyes.

She knows exactly what she wanted.

Or, she knew.

But she could be happy like that, and with Roy. Roy is such a man, such a sterotype. Her whole imagined life is like that, and Roy fits neatly, jealous, protective, and bumbling, and he loves her. She knows he loves her.

Again and again, she knows.

When she looks down and realizes that her ring is lying in the street, she knows something else.

"Jim," she says, before he kisses her. And then, Jim, she thinks, as he kisses her, and "Oh, Jim," she whispers, when he pulls away, looking more confused than she has ever seen him before, and she immediately pulls him back, just a little, so that she can claim she didn't really if she has to. But Jim is taking any little thing she offers, and their lips are almost crushed together. She is vaguely aware of her nose being smushed down, and that's familiar, Roy kisses her like that. But then Jim holds himself back a little more, and by the time her tongue meets his, the kiss is soft, and she can feel his eyelashes on her cheek, and his fingers pressing into her hips.

"Oh, Jim," she says again. And now she doesn't know what to do, but his hands don't seem to want to pull away from her smooth dress, and she finds herself quite willing to let them stay where they are. She sort of runs her thumbs over his cheeks, and he closes his eyes and leans into her hands. So it's like she's holding him up. "Oh, Jim," she said, yet again, "You could find someone so much better than me."

He tilts his head to the side, looking like he is still waiting for her to speak or cry or run for a few seconds, and then shakes his head, his hair falling in front of his eyes. "No, no, I don't want someone better."

"Everyone wants something better, Jim." She's saying his name too much. Jim, Jim, Jim.

"Do you?" he asked her, leaning his head down more, so that now she has his forehead, and he's breathing heavily, like this has taken all the effort of a marathon.

Like she's giving him back his strength.

He shakes his head a little, and his hair tickles her fingers. Then when she doesn't answer, he finally pulls himself up, red, sad eyes boring into her.

"Do you, Pam?"

God, it would be so easy to walk away here. But his hands just won't goddamn move.

She still doesn't answer, and he pulls away slightly. She leans back towards him, but now he won't just latch onto her like before, she has to do something. So she grabs his hand, and almost collapses with relief when he squeezes it tight. Jim's eyes have been on his shoes for the last twenty seconds, but now he looks up a tiny bit. He frowns, then looks up at her quickly.

"Where's your ring?" he asks, and his eyes widen.

"Oh," she murmers, "it came off. It's...um," she says, her breath is catching in her throat.

He is much too close.

She has to back away. She can't throw away everything, she is a mature adult, and she can't just let her whole life slip through her fingers because of one paragraph of professed love that she can't even begin to sift through.

She has to move. She has to leave.

But she has no control and he has all of it right now, and she resents him for it. Just once, she wants to be in charge, so she grabs him, and she kisses him, and she pushes him down so he's sitting on his desk. And now she is taller and stronger and she will be in charge and someone will follow her.

She kisses him, and she almost wants to laugh at the look on his face when she opens her eyes for a second. Like he's seen a ghost, like he's just been named the Chocolate King, like Dwight had come to work wearing a geisha outfit, complete with facepaint.

Well. Not that last one.

She realizes, with a pang of guilt, that Jim had been giving her everything that she'd just been thinking about for years.

He had always been following her around.

So she pulls back a little bit, maybe he wants to think about this, she kind of does.

"Jim, maybe we-" but then Jim has pulled her back, his tongue is pressed against her lips and she parts them without a twinge of regret.

"Pam?" he murmurs, and she shakes her head.

"Nevermind."

As the straps of her dress start sliding down her arms, she is shocked back out of the moment. Look what she's doing. She is cheating. A cheater. How will Jim ever trust her now, if she could just cheat on Roy?

She realizes she's assuming Jim will even want her after he's had her.

No, she thinks, No, Jim is not like that. Of course he will want her. Look at what he is asking her to do. Leave Roy. She lives with Roy. She is giving up her whole life for this, and as his shirt and her dress hit the floor at the same moment, she knows that there's no going back.

Oh god, she will never go back. She can't go back. She would die to go back now.

"Pam, I love you," he says again.

She licks her lips, and doesn't reply. He looks terrified for a second, like now she'll leave him, like this is all he'll ever get and his chance is over and she is going to erase this entire night from her memory (he's convinced that she does that all the time; it's the only way to explain how this took so long to happen, really) when she gives him a tight grin.

"You...you love me."

Pam. He loves you.

Pam. He is kissing you.

Pam. This is Jim.

There is no sense.

And there are no words.

There is nothing but her face lighting up in beautiful amazement, low breathing, and sensation after sensation, but the only words she can hear are the words that keep ringing through her head, even as he moans her name.

"Pam, I love you."

She can't bring herself to speak, but oh god, she wants him to keep whispering. She can't quite make out the words, but they relax her just the same. They give her goosebumps and she shivers, and he notices. He notices everything, he knows everything, and that scares her as much as it comforts her. She only had to know Roy, and oh hell, she knew Roy.

But you know Jim, the tiny voice in her head whispers, and she does. She knows what he likes for lunch, what movies he's seen. She knows his handwriting, barely legible scribbles that he never even bothers to sign anymore, begging her to think of a new game.

She knows how to tell when he is actually irritated, and when he's faking it so that no one will bug him.

She knows how he looks when he's trying to beat her Sudoku record, peering at the screen with a concentrating frown, his tongue just barely poking out. And even then he can never really hold still, he moves around restlessly like he's playing a video game, and when he finally does pause for more than a second, she knows that he's about to shoot her a grin that she knows will make her knees tremble.

Even when she's sitting down.

The only thing she's never seen before is what he looks like when he is nearly naked and on top of her. It doesn't make her feel gorgeous, but that's okay. She doesn't need that, she's never tried to be, so she doesn't need that affirmation. It doesn't make her feel sleepy and covered, like just after she has sex with Roy.

She feels amazed. Amazed that someone can look at her like that. Want her that much, so much. So desperately.

And she feels a kind of hunger, almost, but that's alright. Because she knows that she won't have to stay that way. It's the kind of hunger she has just before dinner is put onto her plate. She knows she will get what she needs, and because of it, the ache almost makes this better.

Every little thing about this makes it better as a whole.

Jim moves. So Pam moves.

And they move together.