He was in too deep.

He’d known that for a while, if he was honest. Certainly by the time he started acknowledging the romantic feelings he had for Agent Beesly, he was already too far gone to do what he ought to have done: report in to Langley and get reassigned. Instead, he’d tried to plow it all under into his paper salesman persona. Agent Halpert didn’t have a crush on (wasn’t in love with) Agent Beesly. Jim Halpert, slacker paper seller had a crush on (was definitely head over heels for) Pam Beesly, receptionist. The pseudo-dates, the long lingering glances, the jellybeans: these were all just excuses for Jim Halpert to hang around Pam Beesley so Agent Halpert and Agent Beesly could talk freely about their real work. They didn’t mean anything, right?

So it didn’t matter that he could still remember the first time she held his hand. For real, or at least he thinks so. Certainly not entirely in character, as she had when they ran from those thugs in Monaco, or when they had to pretend to be a married couple in Punta Arenas. No, this was extracurricular, even if they were still in the personas they now lived in 24/7. They had been playing a game of rock-paper-scissors over who had to do some silly thing Michael wanted them to do. Michael Scott, who somehow didn’t have a problem with having two employees he’d never interviewed or hired working in his office. Maybe he thought Jan had gone over his head—though why she would do that for the receptionist position was rather unclear—and that was not too far from the truth. Dunder Mifflin corporate certainly had been involved. The company was getting a nice little tax break in exchange for housing this particular sting operation. It was convenient for them because it fit nicely into a profit and loss spreadsheet somewhere; it was convenient for the government because it allowed two CIA agents (working through the FBI so they could operate on domestic soil) to infiltrate the Scranton branch of a drug- and weapons-smuggling syndicate; and it was convenient for Agent Halpert because he got to look at Agent Beesly for eight hours every day. He used to think she got something similar out of the arrangement, but last May had suggested he might have been wrong on that score. He would have to think about that more.

But anyway, they’d been avoiding some minor task of Michael’s that only one of them had to do, and they’d been playing this game of rock-paper-scissors for far too long. Every throw was a tie, like they were reading each other’s minds in a split second before each round. So Jim dug deep inside himself, thought about what Pam would do next, and threw not what would beat that, but what would beat the beater for that. Complex stuff, but that was the life of a CIA agent, even in Scranton. Non-stop action. He opened his eyes to see his paper hovering over her rock, and let his hand fall onto hers.

“That’s what you get, Beesly, for throwing rock in a paper company. Amateur mistake.”

She’d smiled up at him—that smile that he didn’t want to believe he was misunderstanding, the one that reached down deep inside him and ripped a grin out of him even when he was in the dumps, and that could send him flying higher than an SR-71 Blackbird when he was feeling good already, like he was now—and he almost missed her response as he grinned down at her.

“I just figured you’d be so sick of paper you’d never throw it.”

“Just lulling you into a false sense of security.”

“False?”

“Well, certainly. There’s all kinds of dangerous people around here. Look at Dwight. Did you know he’s a volunteer sheriff’s deputy? You can’t be too careful around people with training like that.”

She stifled a giggle with her left hand, and he realized her right was still there, tucked under his paper, but not balled up into rock at all. She’d relaxed her hand and slipped her fingers between his. He held his breath.

She gave his hand a friendly tug.

“So, you gonna make me do all that paperwork now, Halpert?”

“I dunno, Beesly, I did win fair and square.”

“You’re so mean.”

“I? Mean? You clearly have me confused with some other Jim Halpert. There are 447 of us in the continental US.”

“But how many of you work with me?”

He lowered his voice. “Officially, 6. But they’re all me, Beesly.”

She giggled. They were still holding hands.

Then Roy Anderson walked in, and she jumped back. So did he to be fair. Anderson was Beesly’s contact, her “in” to the smuggling cartel that ran through the warehouse downstairs. Paper was the perfect packing material for drugs and guns: boring, heavy, packed in giant pallets, and with shipments no one really bothered to do more than spot-check because of the aforementioned three issues. Beesly had been working this case for years, with multiple partners; she had Anderson’s trust, and they were engaged. Jim was fairly sure she wasn’t actually in love with him—he had his own hopes to consider, after all—but she worked well with him and seemed to enjoy his company. Jim did not, and not just because he was engaged to the woman he loved. But even he knew that letting Anderson see his feelings for Beesly would not only jeopardize his standing with her but the entire operation. He was not particularly concerned for his own safety—Anderson was a high school football player, but he was in combat-ready condition himself—but he did value Beesly’s good opinion, and the operation was important for national security. Or so he kept telling himself. So he jumped back, and their hands parted.

Still, he knew exactly how long she had held his hand—2 minutes and 37 seconds—and he knew that up until that point they were the happiest 2 minutes and 37 seconds of his life, even including his various graduations and the medal ceremony for his Bronze Star (under a different name, of course). He was in deep.

And right now that was a real problem, not just because he’d broken protocol so hard in May that she’d run out crying and he’d taken a 3 month tour at Langley just to get away from the situation (mostly getting reamed by higher-ups for jeopardizing the op; the only reason he still had a job was because he’d officially done it in character, and been able to justify it that way and lie through his teeth about his own feelings). It was a real problem because he was being sent back in. And although he’d lied very effectively to Langley and his superiors, he hadn’t lied nearly as well to the person who really mattered: himself.

He was still in deep, and it was only going to get worse. Because she was still there, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with rejection.